COUNCILLORS IN Kilkenny have expressed concern at what they believe to be the movement of beggars to the city to exploit the tourist season.
Since the start of the summer, there has been a significant and highly visible increase in the number of people begging on the streets of Kilkenny.
Most are migrants from eastern Europe. The majority are women who are usually accompanied by infants. Unaccompanied children are also begging.
The issue has been discussed at a meeting of Kilkenny Borough Council but councillors are generally reluctant to comment publicly with some saying they fear being “accused of racism”.
However, they expressed concern that some of the women and children who are begging may be doing so under duress from an organised gang which takes a share of monies collected.
Councillors are also worried that children, who have been observed begging on the streets before the holidays began, are not attending school and have called on the Department of Education’s school inspectors to investigate.
Fine Gael councillor Martin Brett said the beggars were “not local residents and are being bused into Kilkenny and other provincial towns on a daily basis”.
He has brought the matter to the attention of gardaí who say they are powerless to act.
A Garda spokesman said: “There is a gap in the law since the courts struck down the old legislation on begging and, unless beggars create a nuisance or commit a public order offence, there is nothing we [gardaí] can do”.
He agreed that “Kilkenny and other towns are being targeted” in an “organised” way but said that “gardaí cannot stop a mini-bus carrying a group of people into a town as we’re not a police state”.
The spokesman added that while they could not prevent adults begging, they could act “if there are child welfare issues involved”.
Last year, following a High Court ruling that the 1847 Vagrancy Act was unconstitutional, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern announced plans to introduce new legislation to control begging.
“Business and tourist interests are damaged by begging on the streets of our cities and towns,” he said, adding that “it is very distressing to witness young children effectively forced on to the streets to beg by sinister adults”.
The proposed new law would include a maximum penalty of a €700 fine or a month in prison for those convicted of aggressive or persistent begging or for those who are asked by a garda to desist from begging and fail to do so. Failure to give a name and address could result in a €500 fine.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice could not say when the Bill would be published but that it was “scheduled for 2009”.