Unholy row as council blames clergy for traffic chaos

An unholy row has broken out between Galway City Council, the Gardaí and the Bishop of Galway over the “catastrophic” traffic jams caused by the visit of the relics of St Anthony to Galway Cathedral.

Negligent clerics have been blamed for the traffic chaos throughout the city on Tuesday – as up to 40,000 people visited the Cathedral ‘without warning’.

The Head of the Galway Transportation Unit has said he was not given advance warning of the ‘tour’ of the relics – which added anything up to 10,000 cars to the city’s road network.

Jim Molloy said the traffic was the worst he’d ever seen and compared it to the catastrophe that would be caused if the Council had to shut down the Quincentenary Bridge.

And the Gardaí said it created a “major headache” for them from a policing perspective.

Jim Molloy said: “It was like the ultimate catastrophe. We had no advance warning of it. There should have been a Traffic Management Plan in place. We were caught off-guard and there was nothing we could do.

“If we knew in advance [about the relics], we could have warned people to expect major delays. As it was, there was nothing that we, or the Gardaí, could do,” said Mr Molloy.

Galway Diocesan Secretary Fr Martin Whelan admitted the Council and Gardaí were not notified in advance, but said they didn’t expect the huge numbers of people who attended.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.