Almost 30 per cent of Galway Garda cars set for scrapheap

Date Published: 03-Apr-2013

The number of Garda vehicles available to the force in Galway will diminish by almost a third before the end of the year.

While new vehicles have been provided to the Gardaí over the past few months, a considerable number of existing cars are to be decommissioned because they have too much mileage on the clocks.

The Department of Justice have stated that there are currently 77 Garda vehicles available throughout the city and county which is well down on previous years.

And while the force in Galway received an increase in cars in recent months, the number of Garda vehicles that will be taken out of commission before the end of this year will almost cancel this out.

In one Garda District in Galway, twelve cars were reduced to six because vehicles had exceeded the 300,000 kilometre mark.

In recent months their allocation was increased to ten, following the allocation of replacement vehicles but it is now known that the district will be reduced to eight by the end of the year because of cars being taken out of commission through excessive mileage.

Deputy Denis Naughten obtained the figures with regard to the number of Garda cars available throughout Galway city and county and described it as being very worrying.

He said that the replacement cars being provided by the Department of Justice did not compensate for the number of vehicles that had been removed from rural communities over the past couple of years.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.