Almost €3 million was spent on the maintenance of Dublin City’s parks in 2016, thecity.ie has learned.

Over half of the total money was used to maintain the Phoenix Park with €1.57M spent, with costs ranging from pest control to animal welfare to the upkeep of the park’s gardens.

Over 1.3 million people passed through the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre complex in the last twelve months, and it is estimated that ten million people use the whole park on an annual basis.

“Our principal objective is to protect, conserve, maintain and present national historic properties while encouraging appropriate public access,” said Niamh Guihen of the Heritage Services.

A further €630,000 was spent on the maintenance of the National Botanical Gardens, which saw 583,539 visitors in 2016.

A total of €251,000 and €201,000 was spent on the upkeep of St Enda’s Park and St Stephen’s Green respectively.   There are six hundred trees in Stephen’s Green that need to be managed and maintained.

The upkeep of the Irish National War Memorial Gardens (€155,000), the Garden of Remembrance (€34,000) and the Iveagh Gardens (€24,000) brought the total amount spent maintaining Dublin parks by the Office of Public Works to €2.86 million in 2016.

“Some of the costs [included] electricity, gas and water services, oil and diesel services, plants, shrubs and seeds health, safety and first aid repairs, gardening, painting [and] site maintenance,” said Guihen.

St Stephen’s Green was the second most visited park last year with 4.6 million visitors. The busiest month was August, with 574,726 visitors.

St Enda’s Park was the least busy with just 70,320 visitors despite the opening of the Padraig Pearse Exhibition in the park museum last July.

By Andrew Barnes & Jenna Cox