The president of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGS) said members are “concerned” about plans to change licensing laws in Ireland.
Justice Secretary Helen McEntee yesterday unveiled new laws that will allow nightclubs to stay open until 6:00 a.m. m. 364 days a year and that night bars keep the drinks flowing until 2:30 a.m. m.
The only day that there will be restrictions on these new night and disc licenses will be Christmas Day.
Ordinary pubs will have new standardized opening hours, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. m. to 12:20 a.m. m., seven days a week.
But speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Antoinette Cunningham, president of AGSI, said the Gardai are concerned there could be a rise in public order incidents after late closing hours.
“We wonder about the capability of the public transport and taxi system to be able to deal with that, we think about people going to work in the morning and people coming out of nightclubs where the daytime economy and the nighttime economy will meet. We just wonder about our own capability as gardaí to deal with nightclubs opening until six o’clock in the morning, and we’re not sure we have the resource capability to deal with that,” reports Mirror.
She added that the gardaí were not consulted in any way as an association about these reforms and said that was unfortunate.
Legislation will be submitted to Oireachtas as soon as possible to implement the new laws, with next April or May as the deadline for implementation.
Ms McEntee told the Mirror: “We are not going to put any limit on them. What we are going to do is allow for the courts to decide if there is a conscientious objection and if it’s thought there’s too much of a concentration of pubs, nightclubs, late bars or cultural venues, there may be too high a concentration, and they can decide,” reports Mirror.
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