100 extra gardaí to tackle feud gangs

THE deployment of 100 extra gardaí into Limerick as part of a major city regeneration plan will begin with immediate effect.

The plan, drawn up by former Dublin city manager John Fitzgerald, was given Government approval on Tuesday.

After meeting with city council representatives, senior gardaí and community leaders in Limerick yesterday, Mr Fitzgerald said the 100 extra gardaí, along with a superintendent, would be in place within five months.

He said some of the issues he had encountered in deprived parts of Limerick were as bad as he has ever come across anywhere.

The specific duties of the 100 new gardaí will be to deal with crime in the feud gang strongholds of Moyross, Southill, Ballinacurra Weston and St Mary’s Park.

The new garda force will be based at new civic centres in Moyross and Southill.

Mr Fitzgerald said: “The new gardaí will begin to take up their duties immediately. It will have to be phased in over a period of four or five months. These gardaí will be in addition to the guards already in the city. These gardaí will be dedicated to work in the four areas and mainly in Moyross and Southill.”

Mr Fitzgerald said Moyross would get a new civic centre where the local garda force would operate from and where State agencies, such as the Health Service Executive, would offer one-stop-shop type service.

He said it was crucial that all the major State agencies had a presence in Moyross and Southill.

Mr Fitzgerald dismissed reports that sufficient funding would not be available for the rebuilding of up to 1,000 badly vandalised houses in Moyross and Southill. Much of the funding, he said, was already there in the system.

He said sums of up to €300 million and €400m had been mentioned, but the cost would not be anywhere as high as this.

Mr Fitzgerald said two chief executives would be appointed through public competition to run two new development boards in the north and south of the city.

They will answer to small but very representative boards.

One of those who met Mr Fitzgerald yesterday, Southill parish priest, Fr Pat Hogan praised Mr Fitzgerald’s approach in drawing up his report.

He said: “He has come over very strongly about the way people live and how they have to be rescued from it.”