Advance Pitshop Finally Remove the Litter from their Premises!

Good News! City council responded to my complaint on Advance Pitstop to inform me that they served notice on the Dublin-based owners (see last blog article).
Good News No. 2! Advance Pitstop has actually cleaned up the mass of litter that lay at the front of it premises.
Sad News! The place still looks grubby. Broken Walls, rusty railing & still some litter around its grounds.
So we will continue to monitor this premises.

Expose the Business Polluters Part 1- Advance Pitstop

Front of Advance Pitshop, Headford Road, Galway city

While hundreds of ordinary residents are now volunteering their time and effort to take part in the monthly clean-up of Galway city's public parks and woodlands under the auspices of City Hall's Glan Suas Gaillimh that was inspired by Friends of the Friends campaigners, certain property developers and business owners are destroying the attractiveness of Galway city by a callous disregard for the upkeep of their properties.

It is time for the council to take action under the power invested in it by the 1990 Derelict Sites Act that allows prosecution of their owners and in fact to take over their properties if they fail to comply with the regulations.

Irresponsible Absentee Landlords Destroying Neighbourhoods

Yet it is not only abandoned buildings that need immediate attention for the sake of beautifying our city. The Celtic Tiger stimulated a massive upsurge in the sale of rented accommodation. Many of these absentee owners saw their new properties purely as investment opportunities, as a source of rental revenue and cared little for their upkeep. One of thousands of badly maintained rented houses in Galway City

The inevitable result was that there are thousands of rented houses in Galway housing estates with badly maintained exteriors contributing to serious lowering of community moral amongst local residents. For why cut your lawn and paint your wooden fence when the house next door has a pampas-like front garden and woodwork that is rotting away!
This situation will get worse as so thousands of rented accommodation lie empty as the downturn in the economy leads to an return of Eastern Europe workers (i.e. former tenants) to their homelands

But even prominent city centre commercial properties can have a dirty, grimy, derelict look.
One example is Advance Pitstop on the Headford Road adjacent to Aldi and Lidl.
The owner(s) lets his perimeter wall crumble, the pathetic looking puny shrubbery is almost permanently covered with discarded bottles and cans. and the rusty railings have not seen a a coat of fresh paint for years.
Starting now with Advance Pitstop, I am going to publicly report every week a business that is allowing its property to become an eyesore.

Latear in the year, I hope to start a community campaign to get City Hall to introduce bye-laws to secure a minimum standard of upkeep on all commercial premises and rented properties.
It is critical that developers are not allowed to undermine the attractiveness of the city for tourist and resident alike.

Photo shows the rusty railings, broken wall and litter covered shrubbery that forms the front of Advance Pitstop
on the Headford Road
Galway City

The Dirty Truth behind "Ireland's Cleanest City"

Recently, Galway City was declared Ireland's cleanest city by the 'Irish Business Against Litter' (IBAL) and An Taisce, Ireland's Heritage Watchdog.
The Mayor Padraig Conneely took personal credit for this achievement pointing out that it was his consistent public attacks on City Hall officialdom for their shortcomings in litter management that secured progress. City manager Joe McGrath said it was due to the cooperation between all stakeholders and the implementation of City Hall's "Litter Management Plan" that made the difference.
In my opinion, it was the combination of the Mayor's blunt outspokenness on waste as well as the very hardworking and often overstretched front line council staff (particularly the community wardens) that is responsible for the move forward on this issue .
However I am astonished that Galway ever secured this national recognition in the first place.
city, it that it has got worse not better with refuse a normal feature of urban life. Scratch the surface, move off the main entry roads into the city and one will see an altogether darker story. For the problem of litter in my opinion, and that of many communities across the city, is that the litter problem has got dramatically worse over the last few years.

Lack of Engagement with Neighbourhood Associations

One primary reason is that Galway City Council, in spite of the views expressed by the city manager, has failed to integrate the general public in any meaningful way in the campaign.
Of course there is no doubt that the Tidy Towns annual award scheme has repead dividends and that City Council/An Taisce's Green Flag have made significant progress in signing up all local city schools to their scheme and putting into effect positive environment-learning programmes.
But this sector is the exception not the rule. Even here, I am saddened at the litter seen daily in or near school grounds particularly on Monday mornings when the remnants of 'bush-drinking' is all too apparent.
Sufficient resources, monitoring and initiatives are not being allocated to ensure that neighbourhood and business groups undertake regular sustainable year-round clean-up schemes. No coterie of 'park wardens' exist. The potential to exploit the goodwill and volunteerism that exists amongst ordinary people toward their locality and environment is not being exploited. NGOs and residents' associations are being kept at arms length in the management of local parks. The dormancy over the last 5 years of the steering committee of the one park (Terryland Forest Park) that had a high level of multi-sectoral input into its management is proof of this City Hall indifference.
The result is that parks, hedgerows, roadways and rivers are strewn with refuse and are the victims of anti-social behaviour in the the broadest sense. People caught vandalising housing estates, dumping rubbish, letting their properties become invested with litter and degenerating into horrible eyesores are not being appropriately punished. The existing laws are often not enforced and the fines when they are imposed are paltry.
A fundamental sea change is required at all levels.

It is time for instance that the culprits responsible should be forced to undertake public clean-ups in the communities that their selfishness tried to undermine.Green Party Minister Must become more pro-Community

Sadly John Gormley, the Irish Minister for the Environment, has failed to take on board positive eco-proposals from grassroots community organisations such as Galway's "Friends of the Forest" who are requesting the introduction of a national refundable levy on drink cans and bottles, an initiative that existed in Ireland in decades past. The last government introduced highly successful progressive environmental legislation in the form of the plastic bag levy and the pub smoking ban that rightly gained the country international plaudits.

So I fail to see how the leader of the leader of the Irish Green Party, who is a highly intelligent man that should be commended for his statements in exposing many of the shortcomings in our environmental and planning legislation, cannot see that his inaction on such an obvious issue is losing him and his organisation community support. Such a politician should show be more receptive to grassroots campaigners than he has shown since he took office.
Failure to 'think outside the box' means that monies will continue to be wasted on cleaning up the mess rather than in trying to introduce innovative preventive measures that will be cheaper and more sustainable in the long-term. It means too that wildlife and the environment will continue to be destroyed and 'civic engagement', via new meaningful large scale local authority-community will continue to be ignored.

Need for Increased Public Vigilance

But the fight to get our political system to implement Green Grassroots Change will continue. So 'Friends of the Forest' will go behind the facade of Galway being a clean eco-City and expose the level of refuse that really exists.
Starting now with the Headford Road area (below):