A young woman and her daughter taking a leisurely stroll last Thursday evening stumbled on a shocking discovery.
On a stretch of road at Velvetstown, Rathlclare, Buttevant, the woman discovered catheterisation bags strewn along the roadside. “I thought that I was seeing things at first,” she told the Vale Star. “I counted up to twenty bags on a short stretch of road.”
The woman took photo-graphs of the bags and forwarded them to the Office of the Minister for the Environment, to Cork County Council and to local public representa-tives Minister Seán Sherlock, Tom Barry, T.D. and Cllr Melissa Mullane. Deputy Barry subsequently visited the site.
Further incidences of dumping of these bags has since been discovered on adjacent roads and lands.
The Environmental Section of Cork County Council is investigating the matter. “We are carrying out a detailed inspection of the area,” Stephen O’Sullivan, Environmental Officer, Northern Area, Cork County Council, said this week. “We have hired in outside expertise to carry out this inspection as we do not know the origin of the material and it is therefore deemed to be hazardous. Enquiries are ongoing to determine the source and the Environment Section of Cork County Council is following a couple of lines of enquiry.”
Mr O’Sullivan appealed to the public for help and urged anybody with any information to contact the Environment Section, Cork County Council, in the strictest confidence. “We are treating this matter very seriously and when the perpetrators are identified, court proceed-ings will follow,” he warned.