Council frustration over lack of options for meeting gardaí

It is more than 18 months since the members of Westmeath County Council had the opportunity to meet formally with An Garda Síochána, due to the disbandment of the Joint Policing Committee (JPC) system – and the lack of a replacement forum is causing frustration to local representatives, it emerged at their April meeting.

Chief executive, Barry Kehoe, giving an update, told members that the legislation that is to underpin the replacement of the JPCs – the new Local Community Safety Partnerships – has been passed and signed off.

“But we’re awaiting guidelines and we’re awaiting regulations from the department of Justice before we can move on with implementation of the new partnerships,” Mr Kehoe said.

He added that until those documents were signed off and sent to the council, progress was in abeyance.

Cllr Mick Dollard was displeased: “Is there any point in us as a local authority communicating with the Department of Justice?

“It’s a year and a half now since there was actually a meeting held with the senior gardaí in Westmeath,” he said, adding that a lot of water had gone under the bridge since then.

Mr Kehoe replied that every pressure that can be is being put on the Department of Justice at national level to get the regulations and guidelines out. He added that the members of the Athlone Municipal District had held a meeting with senior gardaí in their area, and suggested that a similar meeting could be considered for the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District.

Cllr Dollard favoured that suggestion, stating that at present, lot of issues need to be discussed. Cllr Denis Leonard felt, similarly, and stated that there seemed to be a “disconnect” in the support gardaí are receiving. He said it would be beneficial to have council members inform them of the different issues on the ground.

“They’re getting so bogged down in paperwork and everything else, they can’t even get out in the street to do things.

And I think the more information they have from us about what some of the issues are, about what some of the priorities are, the better,” he said, adding that some line of communication needed to be opened soon,

Cllr John Dolan remarked that even when the JPCs were running, the Athlone members met the gardaí once a year in committee, and he believed such an arrangement would benefit the Mullingar area members: “You can resolve an awful lot of issues when you’re not in a public meeting,” he said.

Cllr David Jones welcomed the proposal of meeting the local gardaí, stating that there are “huge concerns” in his area about rural garda station rarely being open and the gardaí being pulled into larger towns.

He claimed that in Kinnegad now has just three gardaí; Delvin, which formerly had 11 gardaí and two sergeants, now has just one sergeant and four gardaí, who are, most of the time, being pulled in to work in Mullingar because it is at reduced capacity.

The council’s director of services, Deirdre Reilly, stated that the executive had recently been in communication with Superintendent Moran in relation to having a meeting with the Mullingar district members.

It had been agreed that meeting should be held, in committee, before the next Municipal District meeting.