Cleanest and dirtiest Irish towns revealed

A NEW survey released by the Irish Business Against Litter alliance has shown an improvement in the levels of cleanliness and litter across Irish towns.

Many of the country's tourism hotspots including Killarney, Tralee and and Waterford City were deemed cleaner than the European norm.

Scroll down for the results...

The country’s capital did not fair so well with both Dublin City and Dublin North being classed as 'Littered'.

IBL’s Conor Horgan said: “The great majority of tourist towns again showed their best side to tourists this summer.

“Unfortunately, for Ireland to project a clean image, we need our Capital City to be free of litter, and this year we are seeing a deterioration in cleanliness levels in Dublin City Centre, and indeed several roads around Dublin Airport, where most of our visitors enter the country.”

Portlaoise, Athlone, and the Farranree suburb of Cork City were also found by the study to be littered.

The survey, carried out by An Taisce showed that sweet papers, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers and chewing gum were the most common forms of litter.

The survey found, for the first time, some positive improvement with no towns being branded as blackspots or seriously littered.

Dublin and Cork had previously been marked as litter blackspots.

Horgan explained: “While ‘littered’ status is clearly not good enough, we are seeing evidence that when a local authority concentrates its efforts on a problem area, it can bring about results. This could be a turning point, as for years these neglected urban areas showed no improvement whatsoever.”