"People should be able to walk up the street, without having hoboes acting the bowsie," the Garda Commissioner has said. Mr Pat Byrne was suggesting that early closure of late-night fast-food outlets could help to reduce street violence and threatening behaviour in urban areas.
"We have been studying the problem of public order offences and other offences arising out of young people gathering in large numbers late at night. Public order is a growing problem and affecting the lives of ordinary people," he said yesterday.
"We've got to look at what is causing this. Drinking is a problem and we have to look at late drinking in pubs and discos. But the late-night fast-food outlets are also a factor. You can't take one in isolation from the other. Anything which facilitates the congregation of people late at night is a factor."
Mr Byrne said limiting the fastfood restaurants' opening hours would mean there would be no natural place where people who had been drinking would gather late at night. In the centre of Dublin thousands of young people congregated at such outlets late at night, while hundreds gathered in towns, he said. If the takeaway shops and vans were not available, they would have no natural place to gather. "They'd go home," he said.
Asked if excessive drinking rather than fast-food outlets was the true source of the problem, he replied: "Say there was no drink, but you had 300 people arriving at a chip shop at 3 o'clock in the morning. Do you think it's all going to be hunky-dory? It is not."
While the Garda can object in the District Courts to the granting to pubs of late-night drinking licences, opening hours for shops are a matter for local authorities. "This has got to be addressed. Otherwise what are we to do, keep putting out more and more guards? Let's look at the cause of the problem," Mr Byrne said.
The Commissioner was speaking during the first day of the chief superintendents' conference at the Garda College in Templemore. The two-day conference is to allow senior officers review Garda organisation, and progress against crime.
Mr Byrne said the conference would be discussing extending the rural policing scheme to 12 more districts, in addition to the 12 which currently operate it. The scheme redeploys officers and can mean limiting the opening hours of rural stations, and has been politically controversial. He hoped the plan to extend it could soon be implemented.