survey of coastal areas and rivers has found most beaches across the country are not clean.
A new Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey shows, Portmarnock and Lahinch beaches dropped to 'littered' status, as did Dog's Bay in Galway.
Beaches, harbours, rivers and their surrounding areas were monitored by An Taisce in June and July of this year. The survey found a 50% rise in 'clean sites', however, coastal areas are more littered than towns.
IBAL spokesperson Conor Horgan, said they had expected to find clean and litter-free beaches as the recent bad weather has kept visitors away.
"Over an unsettled summer, where our beaches attracted far fewer numbers than normal, one might have expected the majority to be virtually free of litter.
Unfortunately, this does not reflect the state of our coastal environment. There's much 'long lie' litter and waste coming in from the sea, and this is compounded by litter from those who continue to frequent our coastline despite the inclement weather."
However, some of the country's busiest beaches were also some of the cleanest.
Mr Horgan said, "Brittas Bay was clean, Curracloe in Wexford, Killiney in Dublin were clean, so was Salthill in Galway, and Tramore in Waterford. These are all busy beaches.
They were all clean to European norms. But unfortunately, beaches like Lahinch in Clare, Portmarnock in Dublin, slipped to littered.
The survey also found there were no litter blackspots in coastal areas and along waterways.
Mr Horgan said, "today's report presents a mixed picture of cleanliness around our coastlines".
"On the one hand, we've seen the disappearance of litter black spots across our coasts. These are very heavily littered sites that we've been highlighting for many years. They included Cork Harbor at Black Rock Castle, White Bay in Cork, the Talca River in Dublin at Ainslie Bridge, and also Grand Canal Dock in Dublin. So that's a real positive".
