Four local authorities spending over €500k per year to remove graffiti
Ken Foxe
Four local authorities are spending more than €500,000-per-year cleaning up graffiti with hundreds of offensive, racist, and homophobic incidents reported.
The councils of Dublin collectively spent €1.026 million on clean-up operations in 2023 and 2024 after over 4,600 incidents involving spray painting, tagging, and messages targeting minorities.
Dublin City Council had the largest bill by far and paid €700,000 removing graffiti following 2,330 reports made to them by the public.
The council said that of those incidents, 923 were reported to be “offensive, political [or] racist.”
Dublin City Council said there was no specific category for the reporting of racist or homophobic graffiti, so it was not possible to give precise figures in each category.
They said: “Rather, of the public are asked at time of reporting to indicate if the graffiti is offensive, political [or] racist.”
Dublin City Council said their policy was to remove offensive material within 48 hours with non-offensive material removed on a scheduled basis.
The council said: “While some of the removal works are carried out by [our] operational staff, external contractors are also regularly and routinely engaged.”
The local authority added that where graffiti was on private property, it was generally the owner’s responsibility to have it dealt with.
South Dublin County Council said they had paid out around €171,000 for removal operations over the past two years, with a sharp rise in spending in 2024.
The council said there were 475 reports of graffiti made to them with 31 of them either racist or targeted at the LGBQT community.
They said it was probable the figure was higher as not all reports were specifically categorised when they were received.
The local authority said around €65,500 was spent on direct clean-up in 2023 with a further €5,500 in staff costs.
In 2024, they put in place a specialist contract for graffiti removal which brought overall costs for the year to around €100,000.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council said they had spent around €93,000 on removal operations over the past two years.
They said there were 1,219 separate incidents of graffiti reported to them, of which 27 were specifically racist or homophobic.
Fingal County Council had the lowest bill of the four local authorities in Dublin and spent just over €60,000 during 2023 and 2024.
They said this had covered the cost of dealing with 615 separate incidents of graffiti, of which 33 were racist or homophobic in nature.
The council said they also worked closely with the Probation Service who provided a scheme for all the local authorities in Dublin for removal of graffiti on public property.
They said: “A list of locations, as reported or identified by council staff or of the public are provided to the [Probation] Service and are actioned by them for removal.
“Graffiti on private property that fronts onto a public open space [or the] public road is also included in this service pending the g of a waiver by the property owner.”
