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SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, February 11, 2019

QUESTION NO. 7

QUESTION: Councillor G. O'Connell

To ask the Chief Executive to outline the COuncil's policy for maintaining Council Housing Estates and to include in his report details such as how often the roads are swept and the schedule for the litter picking per estate.

REPLY:

Cleansing services provided by this Council consist of road sweeping services which are provided to the Council on contract by Oxigen Environmental Ltd, and general litter picking and cleaning services which are provided by the Council's own staff.

The road sweeping service provided by Oxigen is currently provided on a quarterly basis in all housing estates around the County and this requires the contractor to clean footpaths and open spaces as well as the estate roads.  In addition to the quarterly sweeping of housing estates Oxigen also carry out annual cleaning of road gullies, weed control twice per year as well as the removal of leaves as required over the period of September to January.  The Council will be putting in place new contractual arrangements for road sweeping early in 2019.  Additional funding has been provided in the 2019 budget to improve the service provided to those Council housing estates which suffer most from littering and illegal dumping, and this will involve the provision of the sweeping and cleaning service increasing from 4 times per year to 8 times per year in those areas.   

The cleaning services provided by Council staff in Council housing estates includes litter picking, removal of illegal dumping, collection of materials gathered by residents groups and cleaning in conjunction with the grass cutting programme.  Those housing estates worst affected by littering and illegal dumping are scheduled for regular clean ups which take place weekly or fortnightly as is required.  It should be noted that the nature and extent of the illegal dumping and illegal burning of household waste in some areas is such that machinery is required to be assigned to dig this material out and load it onto trucks.  Collection of materials from residents groups is co-ordinated with the efforts of those residents and will take place as and when they are required.  The grass cutting programme which in general runs from February to November requires that grass areas which are to be cut need to be cleaned in advance.  The cleaning associated with the grass cutting programme takes place on a fortnightly basis, at the same frequency as the grass cutting itself.  In addition to the above these estates are patrolled by the Council's litter wardens who will request a response from the Public Realm Section to certain issues that they encounter on their patrols such as litter and illegal dumping and these requests are in general responded to within 24 or 48 hours depending on the nature of the request.