It’s a fare cop – Gardaí arrive at crash scene in a taxi

The Gardaí got out of the taxi and proceeded to deal with the minor accident which occurred just outside the village of Caltra earlier this month.

But Gardaí have denied that the incident was indicative of a lack of resources in rural stations, ten of which were shut down around the county at the start of this year.

Instead, a senior Garda spokesman told the Connacht Tribune that taxis were routinely used in the Mountbellew area to transport prisoners to and from Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon on the days of court hearings.

“We do use a taxi escort to Castlerea Prison and two of our members were on their way back to Mountbellew when they came across the accident,” said the Garda.

“They came around the bend just after the accident and obviously decided to deal with it there and then. They were travelling back from Castlerea at the time.”

The spokesman said it was unfortunate that word seemed to have got out that there were insufficient squad cars in the area and that the Gardai were forced to use a taxi to get to the accident scene.

He said the taxis were used to transport prisoners in order to free up squad cars to deal with other policing issues.

“You could not be going all around the country with prisoners in squad cars and it’s not true to suggest we don’t have squad cars available,” added the spokesman.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.