Gardaí ask council to consider street begging bylaws

SENIOR gardaí have asked the Cork city council to consider drafting bylaws to help control street begging.

The request follows a High Court ruling earlier this year which struck down national legislation governing begging.

Dublin man Niall Dillon, a graduate understood to have fallen on hard times, won his High Court claim in March that a 19th-century law prohibiting begging in a public place was unconstitutional because it excessively interfered with his right to freedom of expression.

The Vagrancy (Ireland) Act 1847 was introduced at the height of the Famine. Section Three of the Act, amended by a later Act in 1939, made begging in a public place an offence and provided for a prison sentence of up to one month on conviction.

But Mr Dillon challenged Section Three after he was charged with begging in Parliament Street, Dublin, on September 19, 2003.

Mr Dillon was sitting outside a shop with a cup in a quiet and peaceful manner when he was arrested, he claimed.

He brought his challenge on several grounds, including claims that the Act discriminated between rich and poor.

Mr Justice Éamon de Valera upheld Mr Dillon’s claim that Section Three was unconstitutional on grounds that the likely sentence amounted to a disproportionate interference with his constitutional right to freedom of expression. The judge ruled that Section Three was unconstitutional.

Callers to Cork’s 96fm claimed yesterday that begging on Cork’s streets was being cleverly co-ordinated.

Groups, including Romany gypsies and young children, were being dropped off at popular city centre locations for “begging shifts”. Their takings were being collected several hours later and taken to banks for conversion to notes, they claimed.

The Cork Business Association (CBA) supported the views and called for a crackdown on the practice.

CBA spokesman Donal Healy said the rise in begging was a matter of huge concern for his members.

“And we also plan to raise with the Health Service Executive the serious matter of young children being used to beg in all types of weather,” he said.

A Law Reform Commission report on vagrancy in 1985 recommended that the 1847 Vagrancy Act be repealed and replaced with a new offence of begging in a public place or from house to house in a manner likely to cause fear or annoyance.