Twelve more Westport CCTV cameras in seven new locations

Hyland donates €20,000 to see scheme completed

Neill O'Neill

Phase two of the Westport town centre CCTV system looks like it will be up and running this year, after it was resolved in recent weeks to proceed with the second part of the scheme.
A local committee comprising representatives from Mayo County Council, An Garda SiochΡna, Destination Westport and Westport Chamber of Commerce, has been in place for several years now. Phase one of the CCTV system has been in operation for two years, with multiple cameras covering streets, footpaths and approach roads to Westport at two locations - at O’Donnell’s corner on the North Mall and at the Mill Street and clock area, looking in several directions.
The phase two proposal will see 12 more cameras in seven locations, with every approach road to Westport covered as well as many of the town’s busy streets and civic areas. On Bridge Street there will be one camera at the bottom, two in the middle and one at the top, covering the entire street. Three cameras will cover the junction at Shop Street and the Octagon — looking back Shop Street, up towards Quay Street and at the Octagon itself. At the top of James Street one camera will look down the street, while at the bridge at the bottom of James Street one camera will look up the street and one down the Newport Road. A further two cameras will be installed at the small roundabout near the new Centra store at the Fairgreen and Distillery Road and Ballinrobe Road junctions, covering this entire area. The monitoring and control of all these cameras will be undertaken in Westport Garda Station, where the phase one cameras are already controlled from.
The approximate cost of phase two will run to around €37,000, with €17,000 remaining from an original allocation for CCTV — which paid for phase one and was given over several years by the now abolished Westport Town Council. This leaves a funding shortfall of about€20,000 for phase two.
However, Cllr Christy Hyland, who has championed the CCTV initiative since first being elected to Westport Town Council in 2009 (and subsequently to Mayo County Council in 2014) has offered to donate his entire GMA allocation for the coming year (€20,000) to the project, meaning that practically the full finances are now secured for it.
Each of the seven councillors in the West Mayo Municipal District were given €20,000 to spend on community initiatives as they desire in the budget this year, and they traditionally give small amounts of this funding to as many groups and organisations as possible. But Cllr Hyland has broken with this practice, in favour of allocating all the funding to what he describes as a ‘very meaningful project that will benefit everybody in the long term’.

‘For everybody’
“It is a project that will now be complete and I would prefer to see a project finished and invest the money that way for the betterment of everybody, than give €400 or €500 to a lot of smaller community projects and groups, when perhaps I can help them in other ways to raise that money,” he told The Mayo News.
“People might say I am committing political suicide in not going down the traditional route of just dividing the money and giving small amounts to a lot of different groups, but my heart is telling me to commit to this project in a town where the population quadruples at weekends, as it ensures that all our citizens can come into town and feel safer and more secure on our streets. There is also a huge element to monitoring suspicious activity in the town, or such activity by those passing through it, and of course CCTV acts a major deterrent to crime and those intent on committing crime,” added Cllr Hyland.