FARMERS and residents in the Mid Monaghan border area have expressed anger and concern during the past week over the dumping of hundreds of discarded tyres on roadside farms.

It was claimed that some racketeers are collecting discarded rubber casings from garages in several cities and towns, as far away as Dublin, and transporting them at night in trucks for dumping at isolated locations close to the Monaghan-Armagh border.

The rogue hauliers are believed to be collecting up to €1,000 per load, for recycling, from tyre-fitting centres which are anxious to dispose of all the worn rubber they collect.

But instead of transporting their load to a legitimate recycling processing centre, the hauliers end up avoiding any disposal charges by dumping the tyres along border roads, and over ditches, into farmland.

Farmers in Co. Monaghan called on gardai and local authority environment officials last week to investigate the illegal dumping of more than 500 worn tyres into a field at a roadside farm at Lisnagrieve near Castleblayney.

A huge portion of the discarded consignment was left strewn along the side of a cross-border road, less than a half-mile from the Keady border. The remainder of the load was dumped over the ditch onto a local farm.

Furious residents in the area have claimed this was the latest illicit dumping of old tyres in an ongoing “blight” on the countryside.

Several large loads of old tyres were dumped previously along roads in the Doohamlet area, near Ballybay.

Cavan-Monaghan Fine Gael Dail deputy, Seymour Crawford called yesterday for increased vigilance in the community to prevent the indiscriminate illicit dumping.

He said he unreservedly condemned the illegal dumping, and hoped garda mobile patrols would be effective in intercepting lorries with “suspect” consignments of tyres moving at night on roads near the border.

FULL REORT IN THE NORTHERN STANDARD