Long calls foul on funding after Tidy NI survey

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 6th Jan 2003

The Alliance Party in Castlereagh has renewed calls for additional resources to be targeted at tackling dog fouling problems in the Borough after a Tidy Northern Ireland Survey found that Castlereagh had finished second bottom of the 26 local Councils in the dog fouling category.

During the last Council election campaign Alliance had called for a 50 percent increase in spending on the problem.

Cllr Michael Long said: "This result confirms the anecdotal evidence that I have received from constituents that there is still a major dog fouling problem in the Borough. I have received dozens of complaints about the problem from right across Castlereagh Central and clearly more resources are needed to make a real impact on the problem."

"Whilst the rest of the survey was very encouraging for Castlereagh, which was in the top 10 in terms of overall cleanliness and has improved by 11 percent on last year, the problem of dog fouling still needs to be resolved."

"Alliance recognised this problem several years ago and called for a 50 percent increase in spending in 2001 but our request was rejected by the other major parties on the Council. I would therefore renew my appeals in light of the evidence from this survey and ask that our hard working staff are given adequate resources to tackle the problem more effectively."

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