Graffiti defacing Cork city is ‘stomach-churning, idiotic’

COUNCILLORS have criticised graffiti in Cork city, voting unanimously in favour of resolving the issue.

Fine Gael councillor Joe Kavanagh told The Echo, “There is a dramatic increase in the level of graffiti right across the city.

“It’s not just specific areas: No part of our city has escaped from it. A certain community of people have our city destroyed.

“They are plastering the city: Anderson’s Quay is annihilated; anybody coming across from the train is met with a blanket of graffiti; it’s just horrendous.”

Voluntary groups, such as Tidy Towns, are “out beautifying the streets, then these people are undoing all their good work”, Mr Kavanagh said.

A major issue is “it’s impossible to police it”, he said, explaining, “You can never catch anybody in the act; they seem to do it in the dead of night.”

Mr Kavanagh added: “Local businesses should make sure that their areas are kept graffiti-free, but there’s a bit of personal responsibility, too: People need to take pride in our city and stop defacing it by night.”

At Monday’s city council meeting, Mr Kavanagh and his party colleague, Des Cahill, proposed a motion: “That Cork City Council put in place a plan to clean up many areas of our city streetscape, which is currently horribly defaced with various types of graffiti.

They said: 

“Tourists visiting our city, as well as residents of our city, are continually appalled at the growing levels of this disgraceful, horrendous graffiti on public facades of buildings in the city. It defaces the public streetscape in a very negative way.”

Mr Kavanagh called the graffiti “embarrassing”, adding that it was particularly tricky to remove graffiti from official murals, with paint layered on paint. He said: “There’s a magnificent mural on Brian Boru Street, a beautiful, marine-themed mural that is a work of art. Someone extremely talented took an awful lot of time, effort, and expense, then some idiot came along and defaced it.

“It’s stomach-churning, and it shows that it’s nothing to do with trying to add colour to the streets: It’s just meaningless vandalism.

“So we are asking people to desist and stop graffitiing, and if they want to get involved in street art, then Cork City Council engage with a group called Ardu, who create some really fabulous murals that are a huge asset to our city.

“They can brighten up a blank wall with an artistic mural and are hugely positive contributors, but meaningless graffiti is the complete opposite: It’s litter and vandalism and we don’t want it in our city.”

Mr Cahill suggested putting some of the responsibility on companies. “The utility companies are the de-facto owners of their installations, be it fuse boxes or telegraph poles,” he said.

“To to be fair to ESB, they do maintain and paint over graffiti on their fuse boxes, but there’s an awful lot of Airtricity telegraph poles attacked and graffitied in town: They should have a programme in place to maintain them to a certain level.

“They can’t be out there, day in and day out, repainting, so it is a matter of getting people to behave, also, but there should be a policy in place, like a quarterly report to outline what cleaning works or graffiti removal works have taken place,” he said.