'Flabbergasted' shock in Portlaoise as IBAL rates town second most littered in Ireland
Portlaoise Tidy Towns say they are “flabbergasted” at a dismal IBAL litter survey that has rated their town as the second most littered in Ireland.
Portlaoise has taken a disappointing dive in the June 2026 survey by business group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).
It was put at 39th place out of 40, just ahead of inner city Limerick.
The judges from An Taisce appear to have mistaken the county library, a landmark new award winning building on Main Street, for its old building in Lyster Square.
“County Library Environs was heavily littered, both with casually discarded litter and accumulations by the liftshaft.
"Litter items were food related, along with discarded sweeping brush. Graffiti was present on various different surfaces,” they said, giving it a Grade C.
IBAL Judges also gave Portlaoise shopping centre on the Mountmellick Road a C grade, calling it “just one of two heavily littered shopping centres throughout the country”.
“ As well as items by the ‘Bring Facility’ there was an obvious presence at base of a couple of steps / by the store entrance / parallel to the ramp,” they said.
“The dearth of top ranking sites have firmly placed Portlaoise towards the bottom of the league, with Main Street and the Dublin approach road the only exceptions. If some of the ‘moderately littered’ sites improved, it could make a big difference to Portlaoise’s ranking,” the IBAL report suggests.
They did find some positives.
Of Main Street, they say “the overall impression was of a generally clean and well maintained environment, with a virtual absence of litter”.
Market Square “just missed out on a top grade” due to discarded cigarette butts and food related litter.
“It was most encouraging to see some improvement at the residential area of Carmody Way and Harpur’s Lane,” they said.
Vincent Booth is chair of Portlaoise Tidy Towns.
“We are flabbergasted. They definitely were not looking at the new library.
“The report is very trivial, it’s petty. The Portlaoise shopping centre is actually pretty well maintained now, they spent a lot of money doing it up and our volunteers pick litter there.
“Every day of the week our volunteers are out in the town and on Saturdays we have a big crew. They criticised us before for approach roads so now we regularly do them too.
"We have won golds in the National Tidy Towns competition for the last number of years. We went up 19 points last year, that’s huge. That would have won the title in other years.
“We are actually entering the Pride of Place competition, for our climate action and biodiversity activities.
“We are not getting too upset about this report. We know where we are at, we sit with Laois County Council and go through the IBAL reports and address or maintain the areas they mention.
"We are disappointed, but we know how far we have come, and it’s done with a lot of hard work of volunteers, backed by the council.” Mr Booth said.
IBAL also gave Grade B’s to Market Square, Lidl, Mountmellick approach road, Esker Hills and Harpur’s Lane, grading just 10 areas in the town.
Sligo won the top spot.