If Cork city can have community wardens with the power to enforce parking and littering laws, why can’t Dublin city?

While Dublin city councillors have been pressing council managers for years – without success – to bring in “community wardens” to enforce litter, parking and dog fouling laws, Cork City Council has had them since 2008.

“They’re extremely effective,” said Fine Gael Councillor Shane O’Callaghan, a Cork city councillor, by phone.

A lot of what they do in Cork is serve as liaisons between members of the community, or community groups, and the council, O’Callaghan said.

They also enforce parking, litter and dog fouling laws, O’Callaghan said. “They do all that,” he said.

That said, those enforcement jobs do fall mostly to the council’s in-house parking wardens and litter wardens, O’Callaghan says.

Cork City Council does contract out some services, like road works, O’Callaghan said. But it also does a lot in-house.

“I think enforcement is something that should not be contracted out,” O’Callaghan said.

While Dublin City Council does have litter wardens, it has for many years contracted out parking enforcement to the company Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS), which fines, clamps and tows illegally parked cars.

Dublin City Council has not replied to queries sent on 29 August – or follow-ups on 5 September and 17 September – asking why it can’t have in-house community wardens if Cork City Council can.

Fianna Fáil Councillor Keith Connolly asked at the monthly meeting on 2 September whether Dublin City Council managers had thought about bringing in community wardens with parking and litter enforcement powers. He didn’t get an answer.

In Dublin

At the council’s February 2022 monthly meeting, Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey said councillors from various parties had suggested bringing community wardens to Dublin city, and he thought the idea had traction.

A couple days later, at a meeting of the council’s transport committee, Green Party councillors proposed a motion calling on council managers to provide at least two “traffic or community wardens” to “assess the role of wardens” in parking enforcement, and issuing spot fines for littering and dog fouling.

“Having a visible presence in our communities tackling these issues would help to curb and address anti-social behaviour and provide for safer, cleaner communities,” the motion said.

The minutes of the meeting say “Members agreed to pass both motions to Chief Executive for report to future SPC [strategic policy committee].”

Ultimately, it’s down to council officials not councillors to move the idea forward or not, though. And at the meeting, the council’s transport head, Brendan O’Brien, did not seem enthusiastic about it.

He said he’d worry about the safety of the community wardens when confronting, and trying to fine, people doing the wrong thing. “Any service will have to really consider the safety of the people out in the streets.”

Dublin City Council has not replied to queries sent on 29 August – or follow-ups on 5 September and 17 September – asking for that report, or, if the council hasn’t prepared it, why it hasn’t.

In September 2023, Green Party councillors proposed a motion that among other things, called on the council to do parking enforcement itself, rather than contracting it out. It also suggested community wardens.

“It should also be explored to see whether litter, dumping and dog warden powers can be combined with those of parking enforcement for a combined benefit for all aspects of the public realm and the community,” the motion said.

At that meeting, the council’s transport head, Brendan O’Brien, said he didn’t think there was any chance really that parking enforcement would be brought in house at Dublin City Council.

“At the moment there’s in excess of 60 people employed on that contract,” he said.

Dublin City Council has about 6,000 staff.

“There’s an entire compound for storage of vehicles,” O’Brien continued. “ There’s towing vehicles. There’s a whole call centre. There’s a whole IT administration centre,” O’Brien  It is not something that DCC would in any way be equipped to take back in house.”

He did not reply directly to the part of the Green Party motion that proposed community wardens with parking- and litter-enforcement powers.

Green Party Councillor Caroline Conroy said, “I don’t think it’s good enough just to say we can’t do it because all of the other elements aren’t in place. I think we could trial it, see how it works.”

Around the same time, Justice Minister Helen McEntee, a Fine Gael TD, announced a plan for “community wardens” or “community safety wardens” to patrol Wolfe Tone Square and O’Connell Street.

But these were something different to what Green Party councillors keep proposing – and their colleagues keep supporting.

They weren’t going to be employed by the council, but by the business group DublinTown, according to a report from the North Inner City Local Community Safety Partnership.

However, their main job was not parking- or litter-enforcement, but “to provide an increasing feeling of safety and act as an additional opportunity to observe and report issues of concern for anti-social behaviour”.

In Cork

Meanwhile, Cork City Council, which has about 1,500 staff, has parking wardens, litter wardens and community wardens.

The role of the community wardens, the council’s website says, is “to work with local communities to improve the physical environment through education, enforcement and local action”.

They “support and attend residents groups, organise regular community/estate clean ups, support local environmental events/groups, support and attend neighbourhood watch or community safety fora and a whole lot more”, it says.

“Community Wardens do daily walkabouts making a visible presence across the area and follow up issues reported such as abandoned cars, litter, dumping, repairs & maintenance,” it says. “They also help to monitor local authority housing estates –  reporting such occurrences as litter/dumping/anti social behaviours.”

The council has employed community wardens since 2008, in the four areas of the city that are part of the Revitalising Areas through Planning, Investment and Development (RAPID) programme, designed “to address disadvantage”, its website says.

There were four community wardens listed on the council’s website in 2022. That’s down to three now, but the council recently announced it was hiring for the role.

Cork City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent 29 August – or a follow-up on 17 September – asking whether it considers the community wardens programme a success. Or how many parking wardens and litter wardens the council employs.