Sinn Féin councillor Gerry Murray this week called for the Garda traffic corps to be disbanded, asking that ordinary members of the Gardaí deal with traffic duties so that more gardaí could be deployed in the towns around the county. Cllr Murray told the July meeting of Mayo County Council: “The ordinary Gardaí in the county are trained to carry out all the functions of the traffic corps and they can carry out these duties as part of their ordinary work. If this happened it would free up members who are solely on traffic duty to come back into the community and give extra bodies to police in the locality around the county”.
Cllr Joe Mellet had suggested earlier in the meeting that the council write to the Garda Commissioner asking that Gardaí who are stationed in a town live in that town. Cllr Mellet’s suggestion was backed up by Cllr Frank Durcan, who told the meeting that if you do not live in a area, you do not really know what is going on in it. However Cllr Richard Finn pointed out that it was almost impossible to have such a scheme in place as gardaí can be transferred out of their stations almost overnight. It was agreed by the members to refer the matter back to the Joint Policing Committee of the council for further discussion.
