Navan's ranking slips in litter survey

Navan’s ranking in the 2015 Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey has slipped more than 20 places since last year with the Meath town finishing in 35th place out of the 40 towns surveyed.
While Navan was deemed to be ‘Clean to European norms’ and finished in 13th place in last year’s competition, the town has been classed as ‘moderately littered’ in the latest IBAL litter survey.
The judging report on Navan stated: “The three top ranking sites in Navan were in very good order – Watergate Street, St Patrick’s Classical School and Navan Shopping Centre. There were five moderately littered sites and the remaining two were seriously littered. Parc Tailteann was the most littered this surveyor had seen it in a number of years – it has scored better in previous surveys. St Patrick’s Terrace had a constant stream of a wide variety of litter.”
Three quarters of the towns and cities surveyed by An Taisce on behalf of IBAL were found to be Clean to European Norms, a fall of 15 per cent on last year. Likewise, the number of towns deemed Cleaner than European Norms fell from 17 to 12.
“After a decade of year-on-year improvement, it is disappointing to see the very high standards achieved by towns slip in a number of cases,“ commented Conor Horgan of IBAL.
“We may be witnessing the effect of the disappearance of town councils, or we may be getting slightly complacent. At the same time, we can say the great majority of our towns are clean. Also, it is heartening to see the problem city areas getting better - if only slowly.”
Longford was named as Ireland’s cleanest town for 2015, ahead of Dun Laoghaire, Kilkenny, Dungarvan, and Drogheda.