Calls for Minister for Justice to attend Mayo County Council meeting

Mayo councillors want the Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan to attend a meeting of Mayo County Council to hear their concerns about the replacement of Joint Policing Committees (JPC) with Local Community Safety Partnerships.

The Mayo Garda Chief Supt is to attend the May meeting of the local authority but councillors want the Minister for Justice to join him.

Fianna Fáil Cllr Michael Loftus told last week's council meeting that the new Local Community Safety Partnerships are “being forced on us". He said a recent university study on how the partnerships have worked in other parts of the country described them as “ineffective”. Cllr Loftus said the study claimed that they “let Gardaí off the hook”.

“Yet this is being driven by the Department,” he added.

Cllr Loftus accused the Minister of Justice of “only thinking about Dublin”.

Meanwhile, the council's chief executive Kevin Kelly confirmed that the local authority had carried out interviews for the position of chair of the new partnership but these appointments have now been set aside following Department direction.

Mr Kelly was responding to a query from Independent Cllr Michael Kilcoyne who accused the Minister for Justice of engaging in “stalling tactics”. It is now understood that the partnerships will pick their own chairperson when they meet.

Fianna Fáil Cllr Damien Ryan said the entire issue needs to be revisited to ensure proper representation on the committee.

“It (JPC) was the one arm of local government that worked famously well and it needs to be brought back. If something isn’t broken it shouldn’t be fixed."