Ireland’s cleanest cities and towns have been named for 2019 and Galway was named as one of the cleanest areas in the country.
The survey was carried out An Taisce, one of the oldest environmental and non-governmental organisation in Ireland.
For the first time, all our city centres were considered to be clean and there is significantly less litter on our streets than there was a decade ago.
Kilkenny claimed the top title as the Cleanest Town in Ireland for the fourth time.
Galway began its years as the European Capital for Culture by being named as Ireland’s cleanest city, pushing Waterford into second place.
The Irish Business Against Litter sanctioned the survey and insisted there is still work to be done across the country.
IBAL spokesman Conor Horgan said: “In 2019 we saw an unwelcome increase in isolated heavily littered sites within many towns, which brought down their scores.
“Citizens and tidy towns groups need to push local authorities to focus on these sites and ensure they are clean for when IBAL revisits them in 2020. We’ve seen the fruits of the greater attention given to keeping our city centres clean to the point where they are now almost as clean as our towns.
“In 2019, for the first time, all were deemed clean.
“Unfortunately, the gap in cleanliness between these neglected areas and the high-profile city centres is not closing. There is a glaring disparity in cleanliness between the North Inner City and Dublin City Centre.
“While we are talking in very positive terms about our cities generally, the picture presented by the North Inner City is quite a grim one.”
Dublin North Inner City recorded its worst showing in years in the IBAL litter rankings.
