JOHNSTOWN: 15 April 2001: by Brian Byrne. The failure of Kildare County Council to quickly clean up the lay-by at Palmerstown near Johnstown has been strongly criticised both by one of its own councillors and on one of the country's most-listened to Sunday radio programmes.
The lay-by was occupied 10 days ago by a number of the traveller merchants who had earlier invaded the Naas Livestock Mart, and when they left last week the area was covered in rubbish, asbestos waste, rotting food and other detritus.
No apparent effort was made by the council to clean up after the travellers left, and this prompted Cllr Mary Glennon (left) on Friday to criticise the authority.
"This is a lay-by where many people travelling over the Bank Holiday weekend would normally stop to eat their food or to take a break on their way back to Dublin," she told KNN. "It's just not good enough, either from a health or aesthetic point of view, that it should be left in this condition. How can ordinary people be expected to comply with Kildare County Council's own exhortations to keep the county tidy when they see the authority failing in its own duty to deal with major littering?"
And Cllr Glennon also asked what are the health and safety implications for the food van trader who operates daily from the lay-by, providing motorists and truckers with food.
"We can take it that the trader complies with all the necessary food safety regulations in carrying out his or her business," she says. "But the trader has no control over the environment of the lay-by beyond making sure that no litter is left from his or her operation. It is simply not fair that the council doesn't itself comply with the kind of regulation with which it would insist on the trader complying."
Cllr Glennon said she did have sympathy for ordinary council workers who might be asked to clear up in situations like this, and last year on the Caragh Road, where hazardous materials are among the litter. "They can't really be asked to deal with this, but the council simply has to devise a special system to do such cleanups, because it is the citizens to whom the authority is responsible who are suffering because of the inaction."
The state of the lay-by also came in for national airing on Sunday's 'Mooney Goes Wild on One' on Radio 1, when environmentalist Dr Richard Collins verbally took the council to task for not cleaning the area, a regular stop on what is the busiest National Primary Route in the country.
©2001brianbyrne/knn