Gardaí say no crackdown on city festivals street drinking

Galway’s top Garda insists there will be no crackdown on street drinking during festivals in the city.

Chief Superintendent Tom Curley said that Gardaí will continue to take a commensense approach to the policing of city centre streets during busy festival times.

He said that during Race Week there could be between 20,000 and 30,000 people thronged onto Quay Street and Shop Street and it was “physically impossible” to police bye-laws that prohibit street drinking.

“I don’t think the business people of the city want a zero tolerance approach,” said Chief Sup Curley.

 He told members of the Galway City Joint Policing Committee (JPC) that festivals such as Galway Races and the Oyster Festival are the mainstays of the economy in the city and provide employment.

 Chief Supt Curley said he could open an “off-licence in Mill Street” Garda Station if they were to confiscate drink from everyone.

 He said he would love to have a thousand Gardaí on the beat at his disposal but the reality is different and the “practicalities of it” is different.

 He said the business community, particularly vintners and publicans, cooperate with Gardaí every year during festivals like the races, and during Arthur’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day, in relation to street drinking.

 Chief Supt Curley said in 2007 he introduced the ‘glass free-zones’ into the city centre during major events and they have been a huge success – the numbers of injuries to people’s feet etcetera as a result of broken glass went to zero overnight, he said, once the plastic glass rule was introduced.

 He was responding to a query from City Councillor Frank Fahy (FG), who asked if the bye-laws in relation to drinking on public streets were “suspended” during Race Week.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.