Athlone has been reported as one of the cleanest towns in Ireland.
A new litter league survey reveals that the town on the Shannon was one of the top three in the country along with Killarney and Kilkenny city.
Roscommon has been deemed to be 'Cleaner than European Norms' in the latest litter league survey.
According to the Irish Business Against Litter group, the town has climbed from 21st to 7th in the ranking of 40 towns and cities nationwide.
However there was disappointment for previous winner Longford who despite improving 10 places to 24th, it was still reported as still 'moderately littered'.
Irish Businesses Against Litter say its inspectors have seen a rise in littering "across the board" this year.
The reports for Roscommon and Longford are below:
A welcome return to the Top Ten for Roscommon, with nine out of the ten sites getting the top litter grade. The two residential areas of Ard Aoibhinn and Cluain Fraoigh were not just good with regard to litter but presented very well. The Main Street and Goff Street were also top ranking. By far the most heavily littered site in Roscommon was the Recycle Facility at Tesco – there were heavy accumulations of cans and glass bottles / jars and some broken glass.
It is disappointing that Longford has again failed to reach the heights of a few years ago, when it topped the table. The town suffers from too many moderately littered sites. The derelict site at former Good Year / Michelin Tyres Premises is clearly carefully watched - as it presents very poorly and yet it was not littered, as can so easily happen with sites such as this. There was an eye-catching ‘anti cigarette butt’ feature along the Main Street - an ashtray of butts with signage ‘No Butts, is your DNA in this bowl? Every week our volunteers pick up hundreds of cigarette ends’ and yet cigarette butts were very much a feature at many of the town centre sites surveyed. It was noted that there were many ‘vacant’ sites along Dublin Street but there was no litter directly associated with them
