{"id":385222,"date":"2026-04-06T20:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T20:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/385222\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T20:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T20:31:08","slug":"just-34-traffic-gardai-in-louth-cavan-monaghan-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/385222\/","title":{"rendered":"Just 34 traffic Garda\u00ed in Louth -Cavan- Monaghan Division"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With just 34 Garda\u00ed assigned to roads policing across <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dundalkdemocrat.ie\/section\/113\/news\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Louth<\/a>-Cavan-Monaghan Division, Fianna Fail MEP Cynthia N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa has warned that Ireland\u2019s depleted traffic units are putting communities, including Louth, at serious risk on the roads.<\/p>\n<p>The MEP says that Ireland is at risk of falling behind EU road safety standards due to insufficient enforcement capacity and a lack of Garda\u00ed in our road policing units across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Nationally, there were 1,046 Garda\u00ed working in roads policing in 2009. Recent figures supplied to N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa, by Garda\u00ed under freedom of information, show that in March 2026, that number had fallen to 649 Garda\u00ed. That is despite a significant increase in the population in Ireland in the intervening years.<\/p>\n<p>Although Garda traffic cop numbers have risen slightly over the past 2 years, N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa says that the spike in road deaths this year means 2026 could surpass recent road fatality levels unless urgent action is taken.<\/p>\n<p>Read Next:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dundalkdemocrat.ie\/news\/dundalk-town\/2055498\/louth-gardai-seize-drugs-and-80-000-in-cash-as-man-due-before-dundalk-district-court.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Louth Garda\u00ed seize drugs and \u20ac80,000 in cash as man due before Dundalk District Court<\/a><\/p>\n<p>N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa is calling for a package of urgent, practical measures to improve road safety, including a significant expansion of average speed and static speed cameras, alongside the introduction of new technology to automatically detect mobile phone use and seatbelt offences. She is also calling for tougher penalties.<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n<p>ADVERTISEMENT &#8211; CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just 34 Garda\u00ed assigned to roads policing across Louth-Cavan-Monaghan Division, Fianna Fail MEP Cynthia N\u00ed Mhurch\u00fa has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15218,9690,61,60,9689,171457,3773,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-385222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cavan","9":"tag-dundalk","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-louth","13":"tag-louth-gardai","14":"tag-monaghan","15":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}