COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, November 12, 2018

QUESTION NO. 24

QUESTION: Councillor L. O'Toole

To ask the Chief Executive for a report in relation to the events carried out over the Halloween, to include the programmes put in place to eliminate the creation of unauthorised pile up/bonfires and what costs if any were occurred in post clean up.

REPLY:

The Council has always recognised the difficulties that Halloween causes for many communities through the illegal burning of waste on Halloween bonfires, the damage to local amenities, and the threat to property and local services.

For Halloween 2018, the Council adopted a cross departmental approach, utilising the services of Public Realm, Waste Enforcement, Environmental Awareness, Library Service, Housing and Community Services Departments to prevent damage and promote the “Safe Halloween” message. 

The Council's Halloween Safety and Environmental Awareness Campaign was launched in early October, with the publication of a colourful information leaflet providing facts and tips on how to stay safe at Halloween. The leaflet also contained details of the various family events hosted by South Dublin County Council’s Libraries which included inter alia Harry Potter Sorting Ceremony, Hallowe'en colouring competition, pumpkin-carving competition and many other spookily themed activities 

 “Bulbs Not Bonfires” continued again this year - this is a reward available through the Council’s innovative Social Credits Scheme which provides communities with flowers in the spring in return for organising alternative Halloween activities that does not harm our environment.

A free pass to Ballymount Civic Amenity Centre was also provided to every Social Credit applicant / group from 16th October to encourage recycling, one pass allows one entry for one car.  These passes remain valid until 13th November 2018.

Our Public Realm operations units collected bonfire material in a number of areas across the county since early October (North and South of the Naas Road), and liaised closely with residents. (Nonetheless domestic furniture including beds, bed frames, mattresses, chairs etc were collected from stockpiles).

All reports received advising of stockpiling of bonfire material were logged specifically for attention and all available resources were deployed to the preventative collections of bonfire materials prior to this Halloween, and a total of 336 calls were received directly to the office over the weeks immediately before Halloween with a further c 25 (excluding duplicates) made after hours. 

For operational safety reasons, contact was made early in the season with local Gardai to arrange a joint approach to dealing with the removal of material.

Our Waste Enforcement Section were in contact with over 150 businesses to advise them of their obligations regarding waste regulations, particularly relative to pallets and tyres.  Regrettably however, 1,100 pallets were still collected from stockpiled material in the days immediately before Halloween and tyres were also included in the stockpiling and movement of “waste” to fuel bonfires.

There were reports of 11 burnt out cars in the weeks across Tallaght and Clondalkin causing unnecessary damage to our parks, pitches and open spaces, and in a separate incident damage was also caused to an ESB mini pillar in one location.

Priority locations targeted for collection of material included bonfires being constructed in close proximity to houses, power lines, roadsides and transport routes.  Particular attention was given to bonfire removal requests from the Gardaí where they have identified a threat to property or services such as public transport.

In addition this year, recently acquired unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs / Drones) were used to detect the illegal stockpiling of bonfire material.   These drones are an important additional to the waste enforcement toolkit, and will provide evidence to officers on the ground of areas where visibility is sometimes difficult.

While it is not possible as of yet to quantify the total tonnages collected over the weeks before Halloween, 46 tonnes of waste were collected by Public Realm operations on 30th October and 51 tonnes on 31st October.