Clean streets - Mullingar goes up scale on the latest IBAL list

The New Year has started with some good news for Mullingar as the IBAL (Irish Business Against Litter) results released on Monday show that the town is now the 13th cleanest place in the country.The IBAL survey which assesses cities and towns based on the amount of litter seen by inspectors on any given day, found that overall smaller towns were now cleaner than the major cities such as Dublin and Limerick which fared badly in the 2009 results.Athlone and Wicklow were also noted for being "covered in litter", by the IBAL inspectors.This year Mullingar has jumped from number 36 to number 13 on the list and Westmeath County Council has been credited with the improvement by town council leader Ruth Illingworth as has the Westmeath Environmental group."The credit must go to George Lambden who have put huge time and what resources they had available into tidying up the town," said councillor Illingworth."It's a fantastic result and I have to give credit to the workers who are out there every morning cleaning the streets. They are sometimes mentioned at council meetings but are rarely thanked publicly. I would also like to thank Hugh O'Reilly and his team."Veronica Lynam who is vice-chair of the Westmeath Environmental group which has worked extensively on anti-litter projects in the county said that while she was pleased with the results, personal responsibility must be the issue of at the forefront of any 2010 campaign to put a stop to untidy streets."The council should be highly praised for their efforts," she said. "But in the last year alone they have spent €1 million on anti-littering campaigns and in these difficult terms we feel that the money could be best spent elsewhere."It's about personal responsibility and what we need is more litter wardens on the street and we need to enforce fines. There is only one full-time warden at the moment and Gardai are busy with other issues and so we have to find ways to make sure that people face up to their responsibilities."Back in November we held a conference on littering with the council and we came up with some great ideas about how to move forward. We hope that with further work Mullingar will climb even higher up the list in 2010. The idea of more litter wardens is something that we will be pushing for."IBAL was set up in 1996 as an alliance of companies who believe that litter has a significant impact on our economic well-being. The group believes that the main sources of Irish prosperity - tourism, Foreign Direct Investment and our food industries - all depend on an image of the country as a clean and green island.The Westmeath Environmental Group is recruiting new volunteers and can be contacted on 044 9374798 or email reg1@eircom.net.