BIG READ: Meet Kilkenny's newly-appointed garda superintendent

Mary Cody speaks to Superintendent Seán O’Meara about policing across Kilkenny and county and his plans going forward to help tackle crime

Superintendent Seán O’Meara is a familiar face to many in Kilkenny and has previously served in the city and county as a garda, sergeant and an inspector.

The Tipperary man is well-liked and respected in the community and his recent appointment is a great addition to policing in Kilkenny. Having taken up the role on July 15, Supt O’Meara has a wealth of local knowledge and expertise when it comes to both policing crime and community engagement.

Supt O’Meara passed out from Garda Training College in Templemore in 1996 and was stationed at Mountjoy Garda Station in Dublin until 2000 when he spent much of his time as a young garda ‘on the beat’ and he remains passionate in his commitment to ensuring that there are boots on the ground in Kilkenny and that there will be plenty of garda visibility around both the city and county.

From Dublin’s north inner city the Tipperary garda moved closer to home and was stationed at the one-member barracks in Goresbridge for four years before moving on to nearby Graignamanagh and then onto Waterford Garda Station in 2007 as sergeant.

Supt O’Meara remembers his time in Goresbridge as ‘a grounding’ experience which taught him about all aspects of policing.

“Rural policing is grounding, it is very broad and you are dealing with everything and everyone,” he said.

During this time Supt O’Meara was awarded a garda bravery award for his part in a river rescue in St Mullins in 2006, when he was stationed in Graignamanagh. The garda went to Banaha in St Mullins after a member of the public reported that there was a man in difficulty in the River Barrow. The garda managed to get to the man in time and received the award in recognition of his bravery.

After spending a year in Waterford, Supt O’Meara returned to Kilkenny and this time was stationed in Kilkenny City where he worked as a sergeant attached to the drugs unit and as a detective sergeant and was promoted in 2011.

In 2019 Supt O’Meara went to Carlow Garda Station as inspector and then onto Thomastown where he served as inspector and then as a detective inspector in Kilkenny City. In July of 2023 the proud Tipperary man was promoted to the rank of superintendent and took up the role as superintendent in Waterford Garda Station.

Following the retirement of Superintendent Aidan Brennan earlier this year Supt O’Meara returned to
Kilkenny Garda Station and took up the role of Superintendent in the Kilkenny Community Engagement Area on July 15 of this year. This area includes all of Kilkenny City, North Kilkenny and the Thomastown Garda District.

“I am delighted to be back in Kilkenny having already spent much of my career working here both in the city and county
“It is a fantastic city and I will be doing my best to make sure that we maintain the high standards that have been achieved under my predecessors.

“We are here to serve the people of Kilkenny and our job is to do the best we can for all of the people all of the time. We have to meet many challenges in that but we will be looking to working with our communities to beat those challenges as we have done in the past when tackling issues such as burglary crime and rural crime.” he said.

Supt O’Meara also said that issues and the focus and direction that policing takes changes over the years.

“When I was here in 2008 and was working as a sergeant the biggest problem we had was residential burglaries and travelling criminals coming here from other parts of the country and targeting premises. Fortunately that has significantly reduced and this is largely due to community text alert groups,” he said.

One area where Supt O’Meara is keen to continue to crackdown on is drugs which he said he realises ‘is a huge scourge in a lot of communities’

“We will be working with communities to tackle that and try and help the families and young people caught up in it,” he added.
Supt O’Meara cited a top priority of his is the continued rollout of the HEED drugs awareness programme in sports clubs across Kilkenny.

“The problem of drug abuse is in every community in the country. We have to tackle it both from the top and from the bottom and take out the suppliers as well as educating people at the bottom and reducing the customer base.

“We have to continue to educate people of the damage that drugs cause and the knock on effects including the effect of drugs on communities and on families. We are trying to educate people on the long term implications of drug use. It is a vicious cycle, a lot of people don’t realise the long term effect of drugs. All they are doing is keeping bad people in the lap of luxury.”

He also points out that the gardaí are raising awareness around how long drugs can stay in a persons after they consume the intoxicant.

“Drugs can stay in your system for a long time and you can fail a roadside drugs test many days after taking drugs,” he said.
Another area which the newly-appointed superintendent will be prioritising is driver education and awareness.

“There are far too many fatalities and injures on our roads,” he said adding that there will be an ‘increased garda presence’ on roads ‘to challenge poor driver behaviour’.

Supt O’Meara has a broad remit in community engagement and it is an area where he thrives and understands the need for a great relationship to exist between local gardaí and the communities that they serve.

“There are gardaí on the beat in the city centre every day of the week. Walking the beat is the best way of meeting people.

There will continue to be a high garda visibility on High Street and I am very aware of the dynamism of High Street and we want to continue to make sure that the city is a place that people want to come and visit. Operation City Safe has been a great success and this will continue to be rolled out on weekends,” he said.

Operation City Safe was launched in 2018 and takes place on Friday and Saturday nights with gardaí are strategically positioned across the city operation to ensure positive interaction and to create a feeling of safety.