COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, September 09, 2019

QUESTION NO. 17

QUESTION: Councillor Teresa Costello

To ask the Chief Executive for details on how the Council proposed to deal with bonfires across the county this year, what plans have been made and what contacts have been made with Garda to co-ordinate services 

REPLY:

The burning of waste is prohibited under legislation, bonfires waste valuable Council resources in the removal and disposal of material. 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.

As in previous years the Council will again in 2019 adopt 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 will be launched later in the year and will again include the publication of a colourful information leaflet providing facts and tips on how to stay safe at Halloween. The leaflet will also contain details of the various family events to be hosted by South Dublin County Council’s Libraries.

The “Bulbs Not Bonfires” initiative will run 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 will again be provided to every Social Credit applicant / group from around mid October to encourage recycling, one pass allows one entry for one car.  These passes will remain valid until mid November.

The awareness and prevention measures which have been taken in the past and will be again this year are as follows –

• a colourful information leaflet providing facts and tips on how to stay safe at Halloween will be produced again this year.   The leaflet will also contain details of the various family events hosted by South Dublin County Council’s Libraries.
• Door to door WEEE collection prior to Halloween by RecycleIT.
• A Halloween pack including information and activity sheets will be made available to all schools.
• Halloween Recycle workshops are being carried out in schools.
• Bulbs not Bonfires scheme is being provided through the Social Credits Scheme. This is a reward available and the initiative provides communities with flowers in the spring in return for organising alternative Halloween activities which will not harm our environment.
• Passes will be provided to social credits applicants for access to the Civic Amenity Site from mid October to mid November.
• The Council will examine how best to use social media to convey the importance of public safety and the protection of the environment during this Halloween season.
• Financial support is also made available to groups who arrange pro-environmental / non bonfire activities through a fund which is administered by the Council’s Community Services Department.

The operational response to Halloween in 2019 will include the following elements.

All available resources will be deployed to the preventative collections of bonfire materials prior to this Halloween, crews will be assigned to this task as necessary during normal working hours but also at weekends and on the run up to October 31st itself. Early contact will be made with the Gardai to ensure that information is exchanged between SDCC and AGS and that assistance is provided as necessary in the effort to locate and remove the threat associated with bonfires and the storage of bonfire materials.  Priority will again be given to the removal of material located beside or very close to houses, park facilities such as playgrounds and pavilions, under overhead services such as power lines, and on main traffic routes (roads/ verges) where a threat may arise to traffic and where the Council are requested to take action by the Gardaí.   Materials will not be removed from private property.

The exercise to survey and map bonfire sites in 2018 recorded a total of 280 bonfire sites in total across the County.  The mapping exercise will be repeated once again in 2019 and this will provide details of bonfire sites to be cleaned and these sites will also then need to be revisited for reinstatement in 2020 once ground conditions permit.

In 2018 the Council’s 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. Attention will again in 2019 be paid to commercial premises where waste is stored and may be targeted as bonfire materials. In 2018 for the first time unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs / Drones) were used to detect the illegal stockpiling of bonfire material.   These drones are an important addition to the waste enforcement toolkit, and will provide evidence to officers on the ground of areas where visibility is sometimes difficult.

Over the weekend and days immediately prior to Halloween 2018, from Saturday October 27th to Wednesday October 31st, a total of 144.4 tonnes of bonfire materials was collected by this Council.  In total the Council collected 522.9 tonnes of waste during both the lead up to Halloween and from the clean ups which took place during the weeks after Halloween.  The total cost to the Council's Public Realm Section in 2018 was €138,940. 

The Council's operational response to Halloween in 2019 will once again involve the following -

• Various awareness measures to highlight the dangers associated with bonfires and the harm done to the environment,
• Action by the Council's Environmental Licensing and Enforcement Section to deal with commercial premises and their obligations to properly store their waste including aerial surveys,
• The Public Realm response to remove stockpiles of bonfire materials will commence as soon as necessary most likely in September,
• Liaison with An Garda Siochana with regard to action being taken by them and by the Council in relation to this matter,
• Liaison with local residents groups who can help to identify the locations of material stockpiles,
• The Bulbs not Bonfires campaign will run again this year to encourage local residents not to allow bonfires to take place in their areas,
• The social credits scheme will once again facilitate groups who are registered on the scheme with the disposal of materials at the Council's civic amenity site in Ballymount, and this will help to reduce the amount of materials being handed over for bonfires.