James Helm BBC Dublin correspondent

Getting to grips with an unsightly problem

It's a modern, urban hazard that's befallen us all: you step on a discarded blob of chewing gum that then sticks to your shoe as well as the carpet and is impossible to remove.

For the street cleaners it's an everyday nightmare, costing time and money to deal with.

Ireland's Government has had enough.

It's targeting chewing gum as well as other sources of litter such as the polystyrene cartons used to hold fast food, and the paper receipts from cash machines.

The government wants to impose a "litter levy" which will raise money for the cost of cleaning away the dirt.

A small amount, up to 10 euro cent, will be added to the cost of a packet of gum paid by a customer.

Environment Minister Martin Cullen enthusiastically calls his plan the "polluter pays principle" which he hopes will reduce the amount of littering and ease the enormous cost of removing the gum from the streets of Irish cities.

Will an extra 10 cents avoid this?

We went out with the team of "gum busters", who use a high-pressure water jet to prise off the discarded gum from pavements in the centre of Dublin.

It's slow work, and the staff were, unsurprisingly, keen on the idea.

Less keen was one gum manufacturer, who believed there are better ways to encourage people to get rid of their used gum responsibly than to tax them.

But shoppers I spoke to in Dublin were mainly in favour of the "litter levy".

"Hit them where it hurts - in the pocket!" said one woman, while a shop owner told me he's sick of scraping gum off the carpets of his store.

Changing attitudes

It is not the first time this government has tried unorthodox means to try and tackle litter.

The so-called "bag tax" has proved a big success.

It was introduced in 2002 as a levy on the plastic bags given out by shops.

Blowing around Ireland's towns and countryside, it was felt that plastic bags were a cause of litter that could and should be dealt with.

The government wants those who create the problem to pay for it

Once the charge was introduced, Irish shoppers quickly changed their behaviour, taking the new, re-usable bags with them rather than buying plastic bags.

It has largely worked, raising money for environmental projects and dramatically reducing the number of plastic bags in use.

Whether the gum tax will be as successful in providing cleaner streets is hard to say.

One woman shopper who was broadly supportive of the idea said that what is really needed is a change in attitudes among Irish people who throw their litter on to the streets of their towns.