Sir, - I share the frustration of the Banagher Tidy Towns Committee which has announced (The Irish Times, January 21st) that it is withdrawing from this year's Tidy Towns Competition in protest at the failure of the Government to tackle effectively the country's appalling litter problem.
The situation is neatly summed up by the secretary of their committee, Malcolm Ross-MacDonald, who points out that while the Government has impressive antilitter laws, they are not being enforced.
Irish Business Against Litter strongly endorses this viewpoint, and has been campaigning to get the Government to apply vigorously, uniformly and countrywide, the full provisions of the 1997 Litter Pollution Act. Despite the fact that the law is being broken countless times every day, official data for the year to June last reveals an average of less than two on-the-spot fines and prosecutions each day by the country's local authorities.
Just before Christmas, IBAL has a lengthy meeting with the Minister for Environment and Local Government, Noel Dempsey. Our delegation, comprising leading operators in the vital tourism and food industries, detailed its growing concern about the damage being done to this country's reputation by the perennial litter scandal.
The Minister assured us of his commitment to the task, and we expect to resume our dialogue with him in the near future. But we have made it plain that unless dramatic action is taken by Government to enforce vigorously the anti-litter laws, IBAL will expand its own campaign to expose the Government's inaction. - Yours, etc., Tom Cavanagh,
Chairman, Irish Business Against Litter, Lr Leeson Street, Dublin 2.