Community wardens in Dublin city should see jobs amalgamated and cover less ground, a councillor has said.
Councillor Michael Pidgeon believes that if Cork can have community wardens with the power to enforce parking and littering laws, Dublin should have the same.
He said all that is needed for the change is agreement from the City Council and trade union support.
Cllr Pidgeon told Newstalk Breakfast that the current system is too complicated.
“Essentially, the problem we’re trying to fix is that we have dog wardens, litter wardens, we’ve different inspectors with people doing traffic tickets and clamping,” he said.
“Rather than them all being separate roles… you [could] consolidate those roles into into one.
“What that would mean is instead of having maybe eight people going around the city looking for people [who are] letting their dogs poo and not cleaning up, or eight people looking for littering, you’d actually increase the coverage hugely because you’d have all of these people looking for similar things at the one time.”
‘A good mix’
Cllr Pidgeon said under the new plans, wardens would be increasing their tasks but decreasing the areas the cover.
“In Cork, they’ve managed to have a good mix of things,” he said.
“They do a lot of kind of community [work], they meet residents groups, support local environmental groups.
“[It’s] also just a visible presence on the street.
“At the moment, to be honest, if you’re the kind of person who dumps litter as you’re walking around, you’re probably not thinking, ‘I wonder if there’s a litter walking around the corner?'”
Cllr Pidgeon said he believes most people would change behaviour if there were more wardens.
“In a lot of cases often I find when it comes to litter and dumping, it’s often simply the case that being called out about it, having engagement from the council and them setting out that there are signs ahead actually does change a lot of people’s behaviour,” he said.
“It would basically need agreement from management and we would need to work with the trade unions if any jobs in the council would be changed.
“Now that there’s a new council we’re hoping to try and advance this within Dublin City Council and just get management agreement.”
Cllr Pidgeon added that it will “probably” be piloted in one part of the city initially.
A pilot project was run in the capital two years ago to help tackle anti-social behaviour.
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