One town in Tipperary waiting over a decade for a CCTV system upgrade
A busy north Tipperary town has been waiting more than a decade for a public CCTV upgrade, with councillors now calling on Tipperary County Council to set aside funding for the project.
Thurles councillor Jim Ryan called on Tipperary County Council to ringfence money to upgrade the public CCTV system in Thurles as the Municipal District has tried and failed to access funding in the past.
Speaking at the September meeting of Tipperary County Council, Cllr Ryan said the council should start putting money aside from their budget to fund CCTV projects across the county.
"We’ve been waiting years to get the CCTV cameras in Thurles upgraded, but we’ve failed to do so for a number of reasons, but one in particular is the funding aspect, the district council have applied for various streams of funding down through the years, and have failed to get funding.
"I think we need to start putting money aside ourselves from our massive budget maybe to provide one CCTV project per district per year,” Cllr Ryan said.
The independent councillor said that there had been a number of incidents in Thurles where people have tried to access footage from the CCTV cameras, only to be told that there is no footage available.
"There’s a lot of situations in The Square in Thurles where people have gone to the guards requesting CCTV camera footage from elements of anti-social behaviour or criminal damage to be told that the cameras are not working,” Cllr Ryan added.
The funding should be a “priority” for the local authority, the Thurles-based councillor added.
In response, a representative from Tipperary County Council said that a lot of time last year had been spent discussing CCTV schemes, and that more money from the annual budget could be put towards upgrading CCTV schemes.
"Members did put money aside from the 2025 budget for CCTV, that was part of the rates increase was ringfenced for CCTV, that money is still there, that money is being utilised, there are already CCTV systems that have received authorisation from the Garda Commissioner and that money is being put into that use,” he explained.
"Looking at the 2026 budget, we can only spend what we get in the context of CCTV, so if there was more money set aside, we could do more in the provision of further public CCTV around our towns,” the council representative added.