Thousands of garda patrols recorded in move to tackle Longford feuds

They were just some of the figures alluded to by Superintendents Jim Delaney and Seamus Boyle at a recent meeting of Longford's Joint Policing Committee (JPC).

Supt Delaney said gardaí in Longford had conducted more than 5,500 high visibility engagements with a large cohort of those focusing on bail, curfew, stop and search as well as armed and unarmed checkpoints.

Burglaries, he added, though up by around 19 per cent, had plateaued somewhat in light of recent arrests and the imprisonment of well known offenders.

His Granard counterpart, Supt Boyle (pictured), told of how there had been over 1,000 patrols in Granard with searches recording a 20 per cent hike on last year's figures.

Those, he explained, had been a key component behind greater drugs detection rates, the most recent and high profile of which had come last month with the seizure of an estimated €72,000 of cocaine in Granard.