“If I had my way there’d be no bins!” That declaration came from no less than the chairman of Fermoy Tidy Towns anti-litter committee, Cllr John Murphy this week. He was commenting during a discussion at the recent town council meeting on the provision of special cigarette butt receptacles.

Cllr Noel McCarthy wanted the town council’s support in providing them on a pilot basis on poles along McCurtain Street. He spoke about the recents findings of an IBAL litter survey which showed discarded cigarette butts to be a big problem in some streets. If they were to tackle litter, he said, they’d have to address that specific problem. He and his colleague, Cllr Tadhg O’Donovan had travelled to a number of other towns to see how they tackled the problem of butts and saw the receptacles in use in Cobh.

Cllr Murphy said that one area of town that had no littler bins has no litter. “And no business either!” Cllr Noel McCarthy retorted.

Cllr Murphy said business owners should clean up outside their own premises. That said, he was willing to support the move as a pilot scheme. Cllr Colette Dolan-Moore supported the idea but pointed out that some places used what she called ‘double ups’ – bins that have a concave part on top for smokers to deposit their butts.

Mayor Olive Corcoran was of the same view as Cllr Murphy. She’d read an article recently, she told them, which said that we spoon-fed people in the Celtic Tiger era with bins everywhere. It was suggested that maybe we should go back to people taking collective responsibility for litter. She then told them that, as a cigarette smoker herself, she extinguishes the butt on the ground before picking it up and depositing it back in her cigarette packet. She thinks others should do the same. As a result she was against the idea of special receptacles being provided.

Two members had left the meeting at that stage (councillors Pa O’Driscoll and Michael Hanley) so that when the matter was put to a vote, it was carried 6-1.