Mayor brands drunken students an ‘embarrassment’ to city

The city’s mayor has launched a stinging attack on drunken third level students who are an “embarrassment” to Galway.

Mayor of Galway, City Councillor Frank Fahy said intoxicated students were creating a negative image among visitors to the city.

Mayor Fahy said they were coming out of drink-fuelled parties in student accommodation and getting on buses and taxis and going into town and drinking more. They were throwing empty bottles and cans out of the windows of buses and taxis, he claimed.

Students were drinking “with gay abandon”, he said, and they were causing “nightmares” for residents of Hazel Park and Newcastle.

He said that students were an “embarrassment” and a “disgrace” for the manner in which they were drunk in the streets and throwing empty bottles and cans around.

Their behaviour was “unbelievable”, he said, and that one of his counterparts, a mayor in one of Galway’s sister cities, had remarked to him recently about the problem Galway has with alcohol.

“You have a serious issue with alcohol and you need to address it,” was how Mayor Fahy described the other mayor’s reaction to a late-night outing in Galway.

He made the comments at the latest sitting of Galway City Joint Policing Committee (JPC).

But community member on the JPC, Tommy Flaherty said students were being singled out unfairly. He maintained that there was no difference to students drinking during RAG Week and the “well-suited and high-heeled” people going around drunk during Race Week.

The Emergency Departments of the country’s hospitals are inundated with alcohol-related admissions, he added.