No additional summer cleaning for Kilkee

KILKEE town councillors have expressed annoyance that just two Clare County Council staff are available to clean the town, for two hours daily, on busy weekends. Staff work Monday to Friday from 8.15am to 3.45pm in Kilkee when the town is significantly quieter.

“There are two staff at the weekend for two hours on a Saturday and Sunday to clean the whole town. During the week, it’s quiet. At weekends, it’s busy but nobody is adapting to what’s happening with the town.

“It’s fine to say that Ennis works Monday to Friday, it’s a business town. But Kilkee just works on weekends. That’s all we have here. Then we’re looking down the streets and we’ve nobody to clean anything or do anything.

“It’s a real issue. Even if they could cut a day during the week and bring it to the weekend? Seaside resorts are different,” Councillor Elaine Haugh Hayes said at Monday’s March meeting of the council.

Mayor Claire Haugh had forwarded a motion asking that Clare County Council ask street cleaners in Kilkee to start work earlier and to “give local staff more freedom to carry out their work”.

However, Councillor Lily Marrinan Sullivan said the decision isn’t down to the Kilkee-based council workers.

“It is out of the hands of Clare County Council. That’s the problem. Even if our lads in Kilkee were prepared to do it, they wouldn’t be let,” she said.

Councillor Haugh said the town wasn’t cleaned early enough in 2012.

“Talking to local staff, they found it hugely difficult to get the streets and the Strand Line cleaned before visitors parked their cars in the morning. The lads had a huge difficulty with that.

“In the past, they started earlier in the morning. O’Curry Street was cleaned quite early in the morning and then they went on to do the Strand Line. Last year it just didn’t happen,” Councillor Haugh claimed.

“How early do they start now? They’re out fairly early as it is,” Councillor Marrinan Sullivan noted.

In reply, town engineer Derek Troy said there are no current proposals to change street-cleaning arrangements in Kilkee. From October to April, streets in the town are cleaned from Monday to Friday, while from May to September it is undertaken seven days per week.

“Overtime is incurred when outdoor staff work any hours outside normal working hours,” Mr Troy explained.

“With the current budgetary constraints, it would not be recommended to incur additional, unnecessary costs.”

However, Councillor Haugh Hayes was adamant that the street-cleaning schedule should be altered to reflect the needs of a resort town.

“There is a problem in the mornings with the Strand Line and O’Curry Street. People are getting up to go walking in the morning and there’s rubbish everywhere. Everything changes in this town when summer comes in. All the schedules change very fast and we have to adapt to it,” she said.
Councillor Haugh Hayes added that bins are often overflowing during the summer, some with domestic rubbish.

“The problem is the bins on the Strand Line. The bins are not good enough because there’s no flaps on them.

“The birds are taking the rubbish out of the bins and it’s going everywhere. Domestic rubbish is going into the bins,” she said.

“We have a shortage of bins for business serving food in the town,” Councillor Marrinan Sullivan concurred.