New by-laws aim to combat public drinking
WEXFORD County Council are in the process of drafting new by-laws which it is hoped will aid gardaí in the policing of anti-social behaviour in public places.
The draft by-law will make it an offence to drink alcohol in a public place, away from a licenced premises. The first question raised about the laws from Cllr George Lawlor surrounded their implementation.
‘Will our wardens be enforcing this?’ he asked. ‘We do have some parks and areas where the consumption of alcohol is going on, but I can’t see a situation where our wardens will get involved. We can’t even handle dog fouling, I don’t envisage our wardens going into parks to enforce this.’
It was then explained that County Council wardens would merely notify the gardaí and it would be up to them to issue the fine. Amanda Byrne of the community department explained that the new by-law would have to go to public consultation and it could be late summer by the time it’s implemented.
‘We welcome the by-laws, but legislation of public order offences is already well managed,’ said Supt Jim Doyle.
Cllr Barbara Anne Murphy took exception to this.
‘It’s not being managed, that’s why we need these by-laws,’ she said.
‘It can be very intimidating for members of the public walking by groups of people drinking on the street.’
It was further explained to members that, as things stand, if somebody is drinking but not causing any trouble, it is not an offence. An offence only occurs if somebody is visibly intoxicated in public. It was noted that a degree of common sense would have be taken in relation to people drinking outside pubs or at festivals.
Council officials were to continue working on the draft by-laws with gardaí before bringing it back before the council for approval.
SENIOR Wexford Gardaí have undertaken to get even more involved with text alert schemes in rural areas.
At last week’s JPC meeting, Cllr Frank Staples asked if it would be possible for gardaí to provide a refresher course for those involved in such schemes.
His calls were echoed by his colleague Cllr Fionntán Ó’Súilleabháin who stated that there were some major flaws with the system currently.
‘With litigation etc, people don’t want to issue their own alerts,’ he said.
‘On one occasion recently, gardaí sent out a text alert the day after a culprit had been apprehended by locals. This discredited the whole system.’
Chief Supt Denis Ferry said he was hoping to obtain a definitive list of all the text alert schemes in the county before determining the best approach.
‘A text alert scheme is only as good as the community group that’s running it really,’ Cllr Ger Carthy added.
‘Gardaí in Wexford also have their own social media accounts and that seems to be working well.’