I echo some of Senator Higgins's sentiments. The weekend events around the country highlighted for me that this issue boils down to how we respect our public places, private property and fellow citizens. We saw disgusting littering, which has been raised. Councillor Dónal Gilroy in Sligo called me this morning at his wits' end about Streedagh Beach in County Sligo. This was replicated around the country. Our beaches and public amenities are not fit to accommodate the number of people who are flocking to them.

We need to help local authorities to deal with the outdoor summer. We need to embrace summer tourism. I look forward to travelling around the country and hopefully getting to some hot spots, cool spots or wet spots. We need more litter, traffic and dog wardens. We need more public toilets and lifeguards. We need to protect our special areas of conservation so that people do not light campfires. This was a problem throughout the country last weekend. Dogs need to be kept on leads in commonage areas so that they do not attack wild birds and sheep.

It is sad to think that we need a campaign to tell people to pick up after themselves. We really do need such an awareness campaign, however, to start immediately to address how people should behave outdoors and to help local authorities to deal with these types of situations. It is not right that members of Tidy Towns committees have to come along and act as binmen and binwomen and do that heavy lifting every weekend. Those people need support. Tidy Towns committees should be for planting flowers and lifting rubbish occasionally, not for this type of regular heavy lifting. Those organisations are intended to complement that work and not to do it.

This morning, I raise the Tidy Towns competition. It is great to see it back this year and that there are €1,000 grants available. Many groups were disappointed that the competition did not go ahead last year but that did not stop much of their work. Members worked within their 2 km and 5 km zones, and boy did we need them. As we heard this morning, there have been masks on the ground and overflowing bins. Cigarette butts are now emerging as one of the biggest issues, in addition to an increase in illegal dumping and dog litter. In that context, there is an award this year for those groups which did keep working.

We must encourage this new localism. We are going to have more staycations and local tourism. Along with my colleague, Councillor Siobhan Shovlin, and a colleague of the Deputy Leader, Councillor Howard Mahony, I launched a Dublin 15 tourism initiative last week because we want to see people coming into our area and preparations made for our outdoor summer. I spoke previously during our debate on period poverty about our lack of public toilets and what a disadvantage that is, as well as the need for bins and a strategy to complement our outdoor summer. I also spoke about casual trading bylaws and what we can do in that regard, as well as about supporting the organisation Leave No Trace Ireland, which encourages responsibility regarding activities outdoors.

I raise the specific point that it is disappointing that only Tidy Towns groups which were registered in 2017, 2018 and 2019 are eligible for the €1,000 grant this year. It includes a group of which I am a committee member, Blanchardstown Tidy Towns. We have been active since 2018. We have done a colouring competition, been in the St. Patrick's Day parade, engaged companies in the area and are of course doing our clean-ups every week. We secured funding from other sources, but we cannot now get that €1,000 grant because we were set up only in late 2018. We did not apply and register for 2019. Our year would have been 2020, but we could not do it then and now we are not eligible for this €1,000 grant. We need that money to get out and purchase equipment and make it a level playing field. We are trying to encourage people to get involved and we have seen an uplift in that regard. We should be encouraging people and capitalising on the goodwill of people who want to get involved.