Galway City Council has vowed to clean up its act after being branded the dirtiest city in Ireland in a survey of 30 urban centres.
Wexford town, however, disputes the accusation that it has let its litter problem slide.
Galway ranked the third most heavily littered urban centre, after Sligo and Swords, Co Dublin, and the dirtiest of the State's five cities, in a survey from Irish Businesses Against Litter (IBAL), published yesterday.
Dublin city centre was also branded "very heavily littered", Cork central was "heavily littered" while Waterford and Limerick were "moderately littered".
Galway also has the dirtiest train station.
A spokesman for Galway City Council, Mr Breandán hEaghra, admitted yesterday that the city had a rubbish problem, but he said they had recently put new measures in place to combat it.
"We've had three inspections since March. We admitted around Paddy's Day that we had a problem, and since then we've taken a serious look at the situation."
In the last three weeks the council has introduced Gaillimh Glan, a promotion aimed at encouraging partnership between businesses, the council and he community in cleaning up the streets and has erected a greater number of bigger litter bins. "Paddy's Day was a wake-up call and this is another wake-up call. We genuinely feel we can do something about this problem."
The chairman of IBAL, Dr Tom Cavanagh, said the findings of the survey indicated that progress on combating litter had not been maintained and it was "particularly disappointing" to see that Wexford, ranked "litter free" last year had slipped into the "very heavily littered" band.
"For a town to reap the social and economic benefit the effort must be a sustained one. IBAL does not subscribe to once-off clean-ups, but to systematic action by local authorities to prevent and eliminate litter. This clearly isn't happening."
Wexford town clerk, Mr Pat Collins, said he was "very surprised by the implication" that Wexford wasn't keeping up its cleanliness record. "It's the very thing we have been doing, Dr Cavanagh's remarks are not true. Throughout the year we have systematically enforced our litter policy; we issued more litter tickets than ever before."
Rankings: from cleanest to dirtiest
1 Cavan litter-free status
2 Kilrush litter-free status
3 Fermoy litter-free status
4 Dun Laoghaire moderately littered
5 Clonmel moderately littered
6 Kilkenny moderately littered
7 Tralee moderately littered
8 Waterford moderately littered
9 Limerick moderately littered
10 Monaghan moderately littered
11 Portlaoise moderately littered
12 Carlow moderately littered
13 Longford moderately littered
14 Mullingar moderately littered
15 Cork Central heavily littered
16 Ballina heavily littered
17 Bray heavily littered
18 Carrick on Shannon heavily littered
19 Drogheda heavily littered
20 Roscommon heavily littered
21 Tallaght heavily littered
22 Letterkenny heavily littered
23 Newbridge heavily littered
24 Tullamore heavily littered
25 Dublin city centre very heavily littered
26 Navan very heavily littered
27 Wexford very heavily littered
28 Galway very heavily littered
29 Swords very heavily littered
30 Sligo very heavily littered
