Locals in the Dublin 8 area of the capital are raising a stink about bags of horse manure which have been piling up in laneways and on streets near homes and popular tourist sites.
Ireland’s most popular tourist attraction, the Guinness Storehouse, which welcomed an estimated 1.75 million visitors last year, is among a number of key attractions in the area, alongside many hotels, shopping streets and residential areas.
The dispute centres on horse-drawn carriages and Dublin City Council, which no longer wants to take horse manure at its local depot, due to health and safety considerations, according to stable keepers.
The council is no stranger to horse manure, having brought in rules as far back as 2010 that jarveys in the city centre must install “nappy” dung-catchers for their horses. The initiative was part of new bylaws aimed at cleaning up areas like St Stephen’s Green and the Guinness Storehouse in particular.
For 15 years the council facilitated the jarveys by taking the contents of the nappy bags at the council’s depot at Sweeney’s Terrace in the Liberties.
For the last year, however, the council has said it is no longer accepting manure. The council said it was up to the jarveys themselves to safely dispose of the horses’ waste.
Horse owner Robbie Humphrey told RTÉ News the situation “is not nice”.
Horse and carts in the Liberties area and around Guinness Storehouse. Photograph: Sam Boal/Collins
“The main tourist attraction in Dublin is the Guinness Storehouse, where lovely horses and carriages work from … But when you go down and see the manure everywhere … and then the smell of it …”
Fellow horse and carriage operator David Mulready said jarveys had asked the council on numerous occasions for a skip if they could pay for the waste to be taken away, to no avail. “We need to put it somewhere,” he said.
He said he himself uses the manure on a farm, but some colleagues “are caught out after so many years being used to going to the same place”.
“We pay for our horse licenses in Dublin City Council and part and parcel was that we go and dump our horse manure”, he said.
Now the jarveys are left with little option but to bag the manure and leave the bags along surrounding streets and laneways awaiting collection by private contractors.
In gardening circles, horse manure is considered a valuable asset. The BBC programme Gardeners’ World said “horse manure makes an extremely good soil improver for the garden” and is often used as a mulch.
However, the programme warned: “Fresh manure mustn’t be used directly on the garden as it can actually remove nutrients from the soil and scorch plants, but it can be added to compost heaps.”