Gardaí and traders establish forum to tackle city centre crime

A FORUM has been formed to stem thefts from shops and to fight other city-centre crime in Limerick.

Businesspeople and community gardaí who patrol the area will hold monthly meetings to share information to tackle criminals.

Each street is represented on the forum, which is chaired by Liam Dwan, general manager of Brown Thomas.

He said: “The group will be collecting the names of management in all the businesses in the city, and link them up with the community gardaí.”

Gardaí will be represented by Sergeant Kevin Balfe of the community policing unit at Henry Street Garda Station.

Limerick Chamber of Commerce has called on traders to contact the new group if they have any issues regarding policing in the city centre.

The forum has a dedicated mobile phone number as well as a dedicated email address.

The chamber’s chief executive, Maria Kelly, said the forum will help to re-open lines of communication between city centre traders and gardaí.

Ms Kelly said: “There is no fault on either side, but the lines of communication dropped. There was not enough communication between the two parties so this is a renewed effort to start this up again, and focus on more police presence on the streets.

“If traders have problems such as vandalism, anti-social behaviour, they can feed their concerns back to the committee members or the gardaí.”

Sgt Balfe said he will monitor feedback he gets from the traders via the community gardaí, which would be pursued.

Mr Dwan said: “We need to keep buildings and our livelihoods as safe as we can. Setting up this group in collaboration with the gardaí, will hopefully have the desired effect.”

Meanwhile, a new Shop Local initiative to attract more shoppers into the city centre has been launched.

Launching the campaign, Minister of State Jan O’Sullivan said: “With more people buying locally we can make the city a vibrant and busy place that will benefit all.”