Kildare has less gardaí than every other county except one

There are less gardaí based in Kildare than every other county, bar one.

A Kildare County Council meeting was told that the county has the second lowest number of garda personnel per head of population.

READ NEXT Class of students appear in Kildare court

The statistic emerged as a call was made by three Fine Gael councillors for KCC to reintroduce Joint Policing Committee (JPC) meetings until the Local Community Safety Partnerships have been launched.

JPCs were abolished last year to be replaced by Local Community Safety Partnerships. According to then Minister for Justice Helen McEntee, the LCSPS will have a wider membership and will include residents, local councillors and community representatives including representation from young people, older people, new and minority communities as well as business and education representatives and business and education reps.

According to KCC official Marian Higgins, the implementation of the LSCPs “has been ongoing for a number of months and the delay in setting these up are outside the control of county councils - but the release of these regulations is expected imminently. There is ongoing communication between KCC and the Department of Justice.

Ms Higgins also said KCC has been “proactively working to ensure that once the regulations are available, the partnership will be able to “move quickly to complete the membership and commence its work.” She expects that significant progress will be made shortly.

The councillors to sit on the Kildare partnership have been chosen.

Cllr Nuala Killeen said the partnership should be set up as soon as possible because it will be “an important tool for crime prevention.”

Cllr Bernard Caldwell said part of the value of JPC was that councillors often got information in confidence from the gardai and vice versa.