Latest news with #DerekKelly
BreakingNews.ie
17-06-2025
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Dublin City Council vows to end waste collection via plastic bag in next two years
Dublin City Council has vowed to end collection via plastic bin bags over the next 18 months to two years. Although the vast majority of households use bins to collect their waste, some parts of the inner city continue to use plastic bags. Advertisement The situation arises because many of the small terraced houses and apartments in the area lack sufficient room for bins. As a result, they have been exempted from the requirement to use them. This week, Irish Business Against Litter revealed that Dublin's north inner city is the most littered area nationwide. This has been attributed to the continued use of plastic bags for the collection of rubbish. Dublin City Council spokesperson, Derek Kelly, told Newstalk Breakfast on Tuesday that all cities struggle with littering. 'It's not just the north inner city, there are other areas and other areas of the country that have similar issues,' he said. Advertisement 'What we need to be conscious of is, the public have to do their part too. 'The city council is putting significant resources into trying to improve the visual amenity of the city and tackle littering. 'We've recruited over 100 additional staff in the last 12 months to improve our operations. 'We're investing significant sums in a new, modern fleet which helps us wash and scrub over 27km a week of our city pavements - so, when people come into work in the morning, the city is as clean as it can be.' Advertisement Mr Kelly indicated that the city council does 'have a plan' to end the of plastic bags. However, he stressed it was not an 'easy task'. 'We are just ready to go on a pilot area off Grafton Street - there are 90 streets around Grafton Street,' he said. 'We have all the arrangements in place; we have two waste compactors that we placed at two strategic locations in that area. 'Customers of the private collectors will have a number of options for disposing of their waste. 'We do intend to move that throughout the city; we have an equally sized area in the north city, covering Henry Street, O'Connell Street, Abbey Street and the surrounds. 'Then we'll be moving further out into the suburbs and urban villages.' Mr Kelly insisted that the days of plastic bags on the streets of Dublin are coming to an end. 'We're all in agreement that the days of plastic bag presentation are ending,' he said. 'And it will be gone within the next 18 to 24 months.'
Irish Independent
10-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
Running public toilets on 24-hour basis in Dublin would ‘quadruple' costs
Derek Kelly, Director of Services at DCC, told councillors that the four public toilets planned for the capital were only intended to be open during 'retail hours'. 'In general, people who are in town for the night-time economy are in a bar, they're in a restaurant, they're in a venue, they're at a theatre,' he said. 'There are toilets in all those facilities. If we're going to open these [toilets] up 24 hours a day, the numbers I'm talking here are going to quadruple for managing them.' Management costs for the four new units, planned for South King Street, Barnardo Square, O'Connell Street/North Prince's Street and Smithfield Square, makes up the bulk of the €5.7m cost over five years. Between maintenance, cleaning and security services, an estimate of €4.4m is attached to the five-year operations contract. Councillors at yesterday's monthly meeting were broadly critical of the costs involved, with many drawing comparisons between Dublin and other European capitals. 'The projected cost of €5.7m for just four on-street public toilets over five years represents €285,000 per toilet per unit per year. That is staggeringly high,' said Fine Gael councillor Ray McAdam. 'When I look at other cities of comparable scale and size, Oslo population 700,000, 200 public toilets. The cost there is between €50,000 and €80,000 [a year]. Helsinki, 650,000 population with costs between €30,000 and €70,000. 'So, my question is, one: how can we bring the costs down?, but then, two: how are other cities able to mitigate the costs we don't seem to be able to?' Mr Kelly said the costs in the report were only estimates, and that companies with experience managing toilets around Europe would be able to inform the council as the project moved forward. ADVERTISEMENT 'We've engaged with [companies] previously through the market consultation, and they've told us they won't provide automated units in the city centre. They just won't last. They're the ones telling us previously that manned and serviced units are the way to go,' he said. DCC is open to reducing costs by introducing advertising boards in future, and by having staff roving between manned sites rather than assigning staff per unit. One factor complicating the advertising displays is Dublin City Council's contract with advertising giant JCDecaux, which is due to end in September 2027. Mr Kelly said that once this contract expires, the possibility of advertising panels subsidising the toilets could be examined, but the units could be installed with the infrastructure necessary for advertising in the meantime. Consultants are to be appointed this month to prepare designs for the four new structures, with a public consultation set to take place in the second or third quarter of this year. The toilets are expected to be installed in the second or third quarter of 2026, following the appointment of a service provider. Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
The Journal
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Journal
New company to take over Dublin City clothes banks after last one reached 'maximum capacity'
DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL will shortly announce a new company to take over the city's €1 million clothes bank collection service. It comes four months after clothing collections in the local authority were suspended, when the previous company collecting from the clothes banks saw their storage warehouses reach 'maximum capacity'. A strategic policy committee meeting heard this afternoon that the tender process for a new operator for textile recycling infrastructure closed two weeks ago, and the tenders submitted are now being assessed. According to eTenders , the contract is worth €1 million and will be valid for two years. Derek Kelly, the director of service at DCC, told the committee that they received 'a number of applicants' for the new contract, adding that he would circulate the details once the process has finished. 'Hopefully within the next week or two, at most, we'll have the winners decided, and we'll enter the pre-contract negotiations,' he said, adding that he hoped a new operator would be in place in the next six weeks. The previous operator, Textile Recycling Limited (TRL), temporarily suspended their service on 27 January. 'Extraordinary backlog' A report on the recycling services that was circulated on 6 March stated that this was due to their storage facilities reaching 'maximum capacity' as a result of 'increasing difficulties in the international used textiles industry'. Services were also suspended or withdrawn from a number of other local authorities around the country, before they resumed on 13 February. 'Due to ongoing global events, many international textile markets are currently inaccessible, which has resulted in an extraordinary backlog of materials in storage in TRL's warehouses, creating the need for the leasing of additional sites and purchasing of containers,' the report stated. It stated that DCC Waste Management Services Cleansing teams across the city 'were instructed to focus on the removal of bags and clothing litter from bring bank locations during this temporary suspension of collections'. Contracts for the collection and processing of this clothing were historically done on a concession basis, where the service provider paid the local authority a set price per tonnes of materials collected each month. The report stated that due to the difficulties in the international textile industry, 'this model has become increasingly unsustainable in recent years'. Advertisement 'It has become apparent that future contracts will require Local Authorities to pay service providers to carry out the service,' it added. Collection services have since resumed, with DCC enacting 'emergency procurement protocols' to establish a temporary contract during the procurement process. Fast fashion 'big issue' Green Party councillor Janet Horner, who was chairing the committee, asked Kelly what oversight it has when it comes to what happens to the clothing after it is collected. Kelly said that it depends on whether the operator has recycling outlets within the State. If they do not, it is shipped to other jurisdictions. This is monitored by Dublin City Council's National TransFrontier Shipments Office. 'That's where the NTFSO step in to make sure that it isn't just leaving the state and going into a landfill in somebody else's jurisdiction. That can't be allowed to happen,' he said. Kelly said he would ask the office to pass on information to the committee around the criteria of what is classified as waste and what isn't in the textile market. 'It is a complex area,' he continued. 'The nature of the world at the moment, there's a lot of fast fashion, and the textile quality isn't up to recycling even, and that's a big issue in the international markets at the moment for textiles.' The Journal recently reported on how Irish charity shops are seeing an influx of donations of clothing from fast fashion brand Shein , many of which have never been worn and still have tags on. Horner said a certain cohort of the population are very aware of the issues around fast fashion and 'the elements of disposability of a lot of what people are getting rid of'. She said that the more data the committee had about what happens to the collected clothing would be helpful for consumer education 'as well as for implementing more effective programs higher up the chain to ensure that we are minimising the amount of waste that is getting disposed of'. The committee also heard that there are 'sporadic issues' of illegal dumping around certain bring banks. Kelly said DCC have a crew assigned to monitor certain bring banks on a daily basis and collect any illegal dumping. He said the issue is something that the council need to keep under review 'over the next while'. 'I haven't been getting in any way the level of complaints that have previously been sent in by elected members and the general public around the conditions of certain sites,' he said. 'I'm not saying it's gone away, but it's nowhere near where it was.' Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... 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