Broken CCTV failed to record sexual assault

Authorities knew camera was broken but couldn’t agree who would pay for it

Anton McNulty

Mayo County Council and An Garda SíochΡna’s failure to agree on who should pay for a CCTV to be repaired resulted in an alleged sexual assault not being recorded.
The alleged assault is understood to have occurred in Ballina over the Christmas period and was reported to An Garda SíochΡna. When investigators went to check the CCTV system, they found that the camera closest to where the incident was reported to have occurred was not working.
Westport independent councillor Christy Hyland told last week’s monthly meeting of Mayo County Council that the fault with the camera was reported weeks before the incident took place. He claimed it had not been fixed because the two State agencies disagreed about which of them would pay for the call-out charge.
“Nero was fiddling while Rome was burning,” Cllr Hyland told the meeting. “It is an absolute disgrace that there was a public CCTV in that area and it wasn’t working because no one would pay for it [to be fixed]. It was put right fairly quickly when the incident happened, but that was too late.
“I accept that technology breaks down and that’s life. But the incident regarding the malfunctioning of the camera was reported weeks before this incident, and State agencies under the Department of the Environment and the Department of Justice were over and back with one another as to who would pay for the call-out charge. In the meantime, we had a serious incident occurring.”
Cllr Hyland argued that it’s fine to ‘argue the toss’ over who pays for the call-out charge, but only once it has been fixed. “It was ridiculous what happened … It is not good enough. I’m not happy, and the people who brought this to my attention [are not happy].”
Chief Executive of Mayo County Council Peter Hynes told Cllr Hyland that he was not familiar with the incident regarding the CCTV camera, and that he would not be commenting on it as it was an ongoing investigation.