Drink fuelled beach parties are driving families away

By Declan Tierney

Illegal beach parties in Galway, that are fuelled by alcohol, are turning families away from these facilities as the Gardai and the City Council have been urged to clamp down on these activities.

Boozed up youngsters have been accused of causing intimidating situations for other beach users and particularly in Salthill.

The recent spell of good weather and even since then there has been a presence of people holding drinking parties on the beach.

The Gardai and Galway City Council have been alerted to the situation which resulted in some families actually leaving the beaches because of rowdy behaviour.

Alcohol is being purchased at local off-licences and then consumed on the beaches which often leads to drunkenness and anti-social behaviour.

According to Cllr. Peter Keane many people have left the beaches in Salthill because of the behaviour of a number of individuals who hold illegal drinking parties.

He said that he was shocked by the level of drinking on the beach that had occurred during the recent heatwave and had now contacted the authorities over the matter.

It is understood that some young children were frightened by the behaviour of some of the beach revellers and this was one of the reasons why families packed up and left.

Both the Gardai and the City Council are now taking the matter seriously and said that they were now monitoring the situation on a daily basis. They said that they would be paying particular attention when the weather improves again.

But Cllr. Keane has slammed the lack of enforcement at city beaches in recent week where he said that many beach-goers openly flaunted the law which bans the consumption of alcohol in undesignated public places.

“While I have very serious views on the sale of liquor I don’t know where this public drinking culture has come from and it was terrible to see drinking parties on Salthill beaches in such close proximity to small children during the fine weather.

“I cannot remember as a child ever being exposed to such behaviour on any beach I ever frequented and this is not a trend that we want to see developing at our city beaches and this cannot be tolerated”, he said.