The President of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGS) has said that members are "concerned" about plans to change the licensing laws in Ireland.
New laws that will allow nightclubs open until 6am in the morning 364 days a year and late night bars keep the drink flowing until 2.30am were unveiled yesterday by Minister for Justice Helen McEntee.
The only day where there will be any restrictions on these new late night and nightclub licences will be Christmas Day.
Ordinary pubs will have new standardised opening hours, from 10.30am to 12.20am, seven days a week.
But speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Antoinette Cunningham, AGSI President, said that Gardai are concerned that there could be a rise in public order incidents as a result of later closing times.
"We wonder about the capability of the public transport and taxi system to be able to deal with that, we think about people going to work in the morning and people coming out of nightclubs where the daytime economy and the nighttime economy will meet.
"We just wonder about our own capability as gardaí to deal with nightclubs opening until six o'clock in the morning, and we're not sure we have the resource capability to deal with that."
She added that gardaí have not been consulted as an association in any way whatsoever around these reforms, and said that that was regrettable.
Legislation will be brought before the Oireachtas as soon as possible to give effect to the new laws, with next April or May a target date for implementation
Ms McEntee told the Mirror: “We are not going to put any limit on them.
“What we are going to do is allow for the courts to decide if there is a conscientious objection and if it’s thought there’s too much of a concentration of pubs, nightclubs, late bars or cultural venues, there may be too high a concentration, and they can decide.
Morning Ireland is available to podcast on the RTÉ website
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