Fine Gael Cllr Neil Cruise has called for action to be taken following an incident in a housing estate in Foxford last Sunday night, at which he said: "All hell broke loose in the estate".
He told the March meeting of the Claremorris-Swinford Municipal District that at one house in an estate that had recently been allocated to new occupiers, there was "a get-together where all hell broke loose" and "cars were driven around the estate at high speed with no regard for limb or life."
He went on to say: "I think the behaviour was despicable on the night - what happened within the estate and the house with the roaring and the shouting and children crying and very distressed and it caused distress right through the estate" and there was a "flagrant disregard for other people in the estate".
He added: "When you see or hear of cars being driven around the estate at high speed, shouting, roaring and fighting - and every window bar the windscreen in the car smashed and cars being driven up on the common areas of the estate, criminal damage being caused by the knocking over of trees in the estate - it is not good enough.
"I have been in contact with the gardai in the area and they are not at all happy and are taking relevant action. I hope this council does everything it can to ensure this kind of behaviour never happens again. I will be bringing this up on Monday at the Mayo County Council meeting and at the Housing SPC of the council. In my time in Mayo County Council it hasn't been an easy few days and it is shocking to have to deal with this."
Fianna Fáil Cllr Damien Ryan supported Cllr Cruise, saying: "It is something that cannot be tolerated, should not be tolerated and will not be tolerated - I think rightfully so, it should be raised on Monday and be referred back to the Housing SPC and as a local authority, we need to reinforce and redouble our efforts in relation to the tenant handbook and the aspect of anti-social behaviour and we need to invite members of the gardai in to talk about anti-social behaviour, not only in local authority estates, it has to be stamped out at all costs; it is up to us to ensure the law is upheld and if new criteria or policy needs to be brought in, we should do that."
Head of the Municipal District, Padraig Flanagan, responded to the councillors, saying: "Obviously we can't comment on specific incidents, what I can say is that there is a two-pronged approach - we are fully confident the gardai are following up in an appropriate way on this case and from a council point of view, there is an anti-social behaviour strategy that is being fully implemented, in this case as well, but I can't go into that here."
