Kilkenny retains 'clean' status, but slides further down table in latest IBAL rankings

Kilkenny has retained its clean status, in 17th spot in the ranking of 40 towns and cities as set out in the latest litter survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter ((IBAL).

Sligo finished atop the IBAL table for the first time in a study which showed that city areas in particular cleaned up in 2025. Kilkenny, a former IBAL winner, has been consistently high-ranking, including finishing as high as second place in 2024, but last year saw a downturn.

The An Taisce report for Kilkenny said: "A good result for Kilkenny with no heavily littered sites and some sites just missing the top litter grade. The latter included High Street, the residential area of Beechlawn and the Bring Facility, New Park Shopping Centre. The wonderful grounds of Kilkenny Castle Park were sensitively presented and maintained – excellent with regards to litter. The Watershed Leisure Centre had some lovely features – picnic tables, welcoming planting at the entrance etc.

The number of towns deemed clean last year rose to 28, with Sligo finishing ahead of Leixlip, Westport and Monaghan. An Taisce, who conduct the surveys on behalf of IBAL, lauded the winning town for its consistently strong performance in recent years.
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Waterford reclaimed its customary accolade of Ireland’s cleanest city, ahead of Galway. Cork City Centre was also clean. While urban areas still dominate the lower reaches of the rankings, 10 of the 13 surveyed showed an improvement in cleanliness in 2025. Galvone in Limerick achieved clean status for the first time, having been branded “seriously littered” in past years.

“The most pleasing finding of 2025 was the progress made in socially disadvantaged areas,” explains Mr Horgan. “Even areas at the foot of our rankings have significantly lower litter levels than a year ago. Dublin City Centre and North Inner City, while still littered, are cases in point. The investment being made by Dublin City Council seems to be already paying fruit, and we are set to see further progress in 2026 if the Council comes good on its promise of replacing bags with bins across the city. This could be a landmark year in the fight against litter.”

There was a notable fall-off in the number of sites with large accumulations of litter or subject to dumping. “This continues a very welcome trend we’ve seen in recent surveys and credit must go to local authorities for ridding our environment of these litter blackspots,” comments Mr Horgan. This was the first IBAL survey where no bottle bank was deemed a litter blackspot.

The survey revealed that the Deposit Return Scheme continues to have a positive impact on the cleanliness of our towns and cities, with a 10% drop in the prevalence of cans and plastic bottles compared to the previous year. These two types of litter are now 60% less common than when the scheme was introduced in early 2024.

Coffee cups remained one of the most commonly found forms of litter and was evident in one fifth of all sites surveyed.

“A real disappointment in a generally positive year has been the likely collapse of coffee cup schemes in towns such as Killarney,” says Mr Horgan. “It is apparent that such schemes will only work with statutory backing. As our data today bears out, without Government intervention coffee cups will remain an unsightly and entirely unnecessary blot on the landscape across our towns. The prevarication from Government on the issue is striking - a levy was promised all of four years ago – and sends out a worrying signal. Weaning ourselves off single-use coffee cups should not be such a big deal.”

The prevalence of disposable vapes, which are set to be outlawed over the course of 2026, was unchanged.