City Council to make security a priority after abuse of staff
An extra ‘staff presence’ at the City Council’s Housing Department over the past couple of months has helped to ease situations where employees were being subjected to verbal abuse and felt ‘intimidated’, a city councillor has said.
Fianna Fáil councillor, Ollie Crowe, told the Galway City Tribune that following a number of incidents at the Housing Department of the Council around the April/May period – where office staff had been subjected to loud verbal abuse – measures had been put in place to improve the situation.
“An extra staff member has been assigned to this area and in the event of anyone persisting with abusive behaviour, this staff member will immediately contact the Gardai.
“Of course, there are massive housing issues in the city, and every day I’m involved in these, but you just cannot start abusing clerical staff who are dealing with the public as part of their job.
“The health and welfare of staff is paramount and it has to be. These are ordinary people coming in every morning to do their job of work, and at the very least, they are certainly entitled to carry out their functions without being abused or intimidated,” said Cllr. Crowe.
Security at the City Council building and at meetings is now being prioritised followed incidents at last week's meeting of councillors, after a group of Travellers entered the meeting chamber and allegedly abused a number of councillors.
The behaviour of the protest group was described by the City Council Chief Executive, Brendan McGrath, as ‘unbecoming and unnecessary’ – he said that the protesters had abused staff and had filmed them on mobile phones.
According to Cllr. Crowe though, the incidents of abuse and verbal aggression in the Housing Office have greatly reduced since an extra staff member was assigned to monitor the situation.
“I know at first hand from the staff, that they felt intimidated by the behaviour of a small minority of people, but they have told me that things have improved since the extra staff were assigned there.
“I did bring this issue to the attention of the Chief Executive, and in fairness to him, he took the matter very seriously and he has put measures in place that seem to have helped a lot,” said Cllr. Crowe.
Cllr. Padraig Conneely told the Galway City Tribune it was unfortunate ‘that we lived in an era where private security had to be hired’ at significant extra cost to the taxpayer, because of abuse issues to staff.
“However, while not condoning this behaviour, the fact that legitimate questions raised by councillors as regards house allocation issues to Council staff, have not been addressed, has not been helpful to the overall situation,” said Cllr. Conneely.