The nation’s litter louts are to star in an RTE documentary series after being snapped illegally dumping rubbish on 4,000 cameras around the country.

The fly-on-the-dump programmes follow staff from TEC Security Services, a company that has been hired by several councils to combat littering. It uses a CCTV network which, staff boast, can catch a litter lout half a mile away.

Stephen Tyrrell, a company representative, said: “Our camera systems can pick up registration plates at night, record for months and be monitored from central control areas.

“Our footage can be used in court because it has a digital watermark which means it hasn’t been tampered with. We have about 3,000 or 4,000 cameras all over the country.”

Last week footage taken by a pen-sized camera disguised as a branch was used in a Cork court to convict three people of illegal dumping. The camera was used as part of a covert operation by Cork county council. The three were fined €1,000 each and had to pay costs of €770. Footage seen by the judge showed a lavatory seat, child’s buggy and clothing being dumped.

Cork’s waste disposal inspector said afterwards that footage from these cameras will now be used to bring more prosecutions and more cameras will be mounted at litter blackspots.

Illegal dumping is thought to have increased in the past six months because of the recession. TEC estimates the increase at 30%. “We have noticed that the number of goods like washing machines and dishwashers being dumped is down this year,” said Tyrell.

“It varies from week to week but people come out to dump in the sunshine. We have footage in the programme of a guy in a Mercedes dumping on the side of the road. We would often see people in expensive cars dumping illegally.”

TEC has the power to hand out on-the-spot fines, usually of €150. It has linked some CCTV cameras to a sound system, which allows staff members to tell litterers at bottle banks that they are being watched and that their dumping is being recorded. The illegal dumpers are then given the opportunity of removing their waste.

Tyrrell said his firm provides film footage to more than 400 clients in Dublin including commercial firms, community groups and councils. “Illegal dumping has taken over from antisocial behaviour. The amount of people and the scale of dumping are phenomenal,” he said.

“We would be getting 300 or 400 [incidents] a week of people illegally dumping rubbish. With commercial dumping the law comes down heavily. The penalty can be anything from a €10,000 fine upwards, or even imprisonment.”

While litter bugs are the most common culprits captured on camera, Tyrrell said film footage has also been used to solve a number of serious crimes, including murders.

“Nothing will surprise me any more. We caught people dumping kittens into a bottle bank. They were rescued but died afterwards from their injuries,” he said.

The RTE series will show the lengths to which councils’ litter detectives now go to catch dumpers. Catherine Jones, an environmental enforcement technician with Waterford city council, set up a “man in the van” sting to catch illegal waste collectors. This was because of a huge increase in the number of operators charging to take rubbish from people’s houses.

“We set up sting operations and meet the people advertising to collect waste and we ask them if they have a collection permit,” Jones said. “I rang up people to come and collect the waste from the Man and Van Hire section of the newspapers and from flyers.

“It is a rare sight to have flyers put through doors and to see in the paper someone advertising to collect rubbish. I had never seen it before. I think with the recession and the economy going downhill, people are looking for a quick buck and there is a high profit in waste at the moment.

“In the sting I try to be as nice as possible and basically tell people they have to have a permit for collecting waste. We will be doing checkpoints. If we do catch anyone without a permit, that’s when the nightmare begins for them.”

Waterford city council and gardai mounted a joint road checkpoint last month on the Waterford-Cork road. A number of vehicles were searched, including HGVs and vans. Council officials challenged waste collectors for appropriate documentation and a number of cases of non-compliance were discovered.

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