Potter is high on pomposity shooting heroin messenger

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Politicians love to fault the Meeja for a whole pile of awful things. Mostly they blame the media for stuff that the media is not responsible for.

But Niall McNelis really did take the biscuit at a Joint Policing Committee meeting, where he blamed journalists for portraying Galway as a heroin hot-bed.

Without a splash of irony, the Labour Party Councillor said if you were to believe newspapers, every second person in Galway is a junkie.

Do we really have a drug problem at all, he mused, or is it just those jackass journos inventing one to sell salacious stories?

Let’s leave aside the blatant hypocrisy of the man, who at the same meeting went on to frighten the bejaysus out of people over a drug den in Rahoon.

Ignore also the fact that at the same meeting the head of the Western Region Drugs and Alcohol taskforce said there was a drug problem in Galway, estimating up to 300-plus heroin users.

Let’s instead have a look back at what politicians, and high ranking Gardaí have said on the matter.

In September 2015, Chief Superintendent Tom Curley said: “heroin is the big problem that we have”.

This was consistent with the top Garda’s previous assertions.

In October 2013, Chief Supt Curley noted a “worrying increase” in the use of heroin here.

He said there were 200 heroin abusers living in the city, and rising.

In September 2014, Chief Supt Curley said: “Where you have an increase in heroin use, you have an increase in crime . . . it is of concern.”

Last Christmas, he attributed an increase in thefts to more heroin use. Chief Supt Curley then estimated there were between 250 and 300 heroin users in the city, and that it remained a “serious problem” that was “worrying”.

But if Councillor McNelis – aka Potter – doesn’t believe Tom Curley that there is a problem, perhaps he will believe his own ilk.

In 2009, Brian Walsh, a then FG city councillor, said the drug problem was becoming so bad, Galway was in danger of becoming a gangland wasteland like Limerick. A former mayor, no less, Walsh said cocaine, heroin and cannabis are openly sold in estates and the problem is “growing out of control”.

Some years later his FG colleague, Frank Fahy said heroin was being handed out to teenagers to get them ‘hooked’.

Last year, Sinn Féin Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh said drug abusers are openly ‘shooting-up’ in public in Westside, and discarding used syringes near where children play.

Several members of the JPC, and current chairperson, Cllr Mike Cubbard, have consistently highlighted heroin as a problem.

But no you’re right, Cllr Potter. It’s not the fault of politicians like you, high on their own pomposity, and off-their-face on their own self-importance, pretending there isn’t a drug problem.

It’s the meeja’s fault for reporting it.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.