Cork man exposes his city's litter problem on the Internet

Bord Failte and the local authorities can hardly be pleased, but a Cork businessman is so angry at litter and other eyesores …

Bord Failte and the local authorities can hardly be pleased, but a Cork businessman is so angry at litter and other eyesores that he has been waging a campaign to expose and shame the blackspots in the city he loves by putting photographs and information on the Internet.

Tired of public eyesores, trailing through streets strewn with litter, cracked and ugly pavements and the stench of overflowing refuse bins, Mr Tom Raftery, who runs Zenith Solutions, an information technology business, decided to create a website giving the real flavour of Cork.

Camera in hand, he went on a mission of discovery, seeking out examples of a city made ugly and less welcoming because of unseemly litter. He hadn't far to go. Litter is easily found in Cork. The photographs were then entered on his site on the Internet - www.realcork.com - and images of Cork somewhat different to the picture postcards of the place were spinning their way through cyberspace.

The site gave Zenith Solution's e-mail address but also invited interested parties from wherever they might be logging on around the globe, to register their views with the local authorities in Cork.

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"Shame drove me to it. I was ashamed of the eyesores about which nothing was being done and the constant presence of litter almost everywhere - outside fast-food outlets, on the main streets, everywhere. Cork could be such a beautiful city but it is being spoiled because of this problem," Mr Raftery said. He plans to go on tour with his camera again shortly to record the latest delights for his worldwide audience.

In the past four months, Mr Raftery says, he has received some 700 e-mail messages from people responding to what they saw on the website. Initially, he was overwhelmed by the response but now it has tapered off to an average of just four e-mails a week.

The site is hardly Bord Failte's favourite one for it showed scenes such as the footpath outside the Cork/Kerry Tourism offices on the Grand Parade in a state of disrepair.

There are discarded shopping trolleys in the River Lee and places where heaps of rubbish have been allowed to accumulate such as an ESB substation on Cork's Western Road, the once elegant boulevard (once chosen for its splendid aspect to welcome Queen Victoria).

It has taken some courage for Mr Raftery to take his website initiative which some in his native city would regard as a sort of treason.

When one of Cork's best known businessmen, Mr Tom Cavanagh, organised a poster campaign last year proclaiming messages in banner headlines such as "Welcome to Cork, sorry about the litter," a number of local councillors rounded on him, suggesting he was causing the city irreparable damage.

Like Mr Raftery who followed him, all he was trying to do was hammer home to Corkonians that something must be done about the awful litter problem. Rather than take the message on board, they chose to attack the messenger.

Pressure of business has meant the website has not been updated as regularly as Mr Raftery would like but it will be, before Christmas, and he is planning new entries to show the current condition of Cork as the festive season draws near.

Whose fault is it? The corporation is the easy target and the simplistic solution is to blame City Hall. The corporation spends £2.5 million annually on street cleaning and is constantly dreaming up new schemes to cajole the public into doing something about litter.

But the littering goes on. Street furniture is now a scarce commodity in Cork because putting in riverside benches, for example, has been found to be a waste of time. They are torn up or vandalised.

Saplings are regularly uprooted before they can mature to help beautify a city crying out for more trees.

It is more usual to see a child dump the lollipop wrapper on the street than wait to find a bin.

At the end of the day, this is a people problem. And, ironically, Cork regards itself as a serious contender for European City of Culture status in 2005.

Those who would hope to improve the attitude of people in the city point to Clonakilty, to the west of Co Cork, with a population of 3,000. In 1999, it won the Tidy Towns Award and this year was the recipient of the Entente Florale Gold Award for towns with a population of under 5,000.

Shopfronts, the streetscape, the attention to detail and a palpable pride on the part of the people who live there, sets the town apart. It was the cleanliness of Clonakilty that set Mr Raftery thinking in the first place about big bad brother only a few miles up the road.