Heartless thieves steal families’ Christmas gifts

The Galway City Joint Policing Committee (JPC) meeting heard how at least two homes in Westside had wrapped Christmas presents stolen by cruel, mean spirited thieves.

The targeting of Christmas presents by burglars comes as new figures show an increase of almost one-fifth in burglaries in Galway in the past year, compared with the previous year.

Garda Chief Superintendent Tom Curley said there were 108 burglaries recorded in Galway City this year, which was an increase of 18%.

He said burglaries are a concern and he had a “plan of action” to reduce that number next year, which included ongoing police monitoring of Galway’s top 20 burglars.

In response to queries from the new, incoming chairperson of the JPC, City Councillor Mike Cubbard (Ind), Chief Supt Curley said some of the burglaries could be attributed to the heroin problem in the city.

He said heroin addicts breaking-in to feed their habit “is an issue”.

Last week, Gardaí revealed that city burglaries are down by 8% over the past three months as a result of successful prosecutions resulting in jail sentences, coupled with a more security-conscious approach from householders. But for the year as a whole there has been an 18% increase.

Chief Supt Curley said he would love an extra 300 Gardaí – he said he’d even take an extra 10 Gardaí – and he was pushing for additional resources from the new batch of Garda recruits.

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune