For residents’ associations & community groups

Activate your neighbourhood

Get your neighbours onto Patrol and make your local area more useful.

Patrol works best when many households close to each other take part. An alert reaches the people signed up within about 2km — so one household on its own reaches nobody, and a whole estate joining together is useful from the first week.

Activate my neighbourhoodI’m a resident — I want to invite my neighbours

Free. Independent — Patrol is not the Gardaí, a council or an emergency service.

Who can activate an area

Any group that already reaches its neighbours

The hard part of starting a neighbourhood network is knowing the households and being trusted by them. If your group has that, Patrol can work with you.

  • Residents’ associations
  • Estate committees
  • Community groups
  • Local neighbourhood groups
  • Community organisations
  • Neighbourhood Watch-style groups
  • Other locally organised groups

Using Patrol doesn’t make a group part of Patrol, and Patrol doesn’t endorse or represent any group. Your group’s page says so.

Already organised?

Already have a residents’ association or community group?

Patrol can give your existing neighbourhood network a structured local-alert layer without requiring residents to share phone numbers.

Your WhatsApp group or newsletter stays exactly as it is. Patrol handles the part those are awkward for: a missing dog, a road closure or a scam doing the rounds reaches every household signed up nearby — including people who aren’t in the group chat — in the same clear format, and it’s still findable next month.

Activate your neighbourhood

In plain English

  • Residents don’t swap phone numbers or join another group chat
  • Nobody’s address or exact location is shown to anyone
  • Alerts follow one simple format: what, roughly where, roughly when
  • No public feed, no comments, no naming or shaming
  • Your committee sees how many households have joined — never who they are
  • Free for your group and for every resident

Being straight: coordinators don’t get moderation tools. Reports about posts come to Patrol, and we act on them.

How it works

Four steps, most of them your neighbours’

  1. Tell us your group and area

    Six short fields. You get your group’s link on screen straight away, and by email.

  2. Send it once to your households

    WhatsApp group, newsletter, email list or a note through the door. The message is written for you — edit it however you like.

  3. Neighbours join in about two minutes

    Each one enters their Eircode, selects their road and confirms their email. No address, ever.

  4. Watch your area fill in

    Your coordinator view shows how many households have joined and when your area passes about 10 — the point where alerts reach enough people to be worth posting.

Activate your area

Get your group’s link

About a minute. Your link works as soon as you press the button.

What your neighbours will be asked

  1. The first three characters of your Eircode

    The routing key — like D15 or T12 — identifies your broad area. That is all Patrol uses it for.

  2. Then you select your road

    You tap roughly where you live on a map. We round it to about 100 metres before storing it.

  3. Patrol places you in your neighbourhood

    Alerts come from about 2km around that point — your neighbourhood, not a whole postal district.

  4. Your full Eircode is never shown

    Neighbours never see your Eircode, your address or where you live — only your first name and last initial on anything you post.

Already set one up? Your coordinator link is in the email we sent you. Coordinator view

Shown on your group’s page.

As your neighbours would say it. Shown on your group’s page — never an address.

The first three characters of your area’s Eircodes.

Sets the goal on your page. Blank means a first goal of 50.

Your name and email are never shown on your group’s page or to members. We use them to send your coordinator link and to reach you about this activation.

Free. No card, no contract. You get a link straight away.

Not on a committee?

I’m a resident — I want to invite my neighbours

You don’t need a group. Join yourself first, then send one message to the people on your road or your estate chat. If there’s a residents’ association nearby, pass them this page — one message from them can do what dozens of individual invitations can’t.

Ten doors

Ten doors is a neighbourhood watch

An alert reaches the people signed up nearby, so one person on a road reaches nobody. It starts being useful at around 10 households — which is one message to a group you're already in, not a campaign.

Who are you sending it to?
Hi all — I've put us on Patrol.ie. It's a free neighbourhood watch thing: when someone reports a break-in, a car being tried or a missing dog nearby, everyone signed up in the area gets an alert. Being straight about it, it does nothing with one person on it — it starts being useful at about ten houses. So I'm asking here rather than going door to door. Takes a minute: https://patrol.ie
Councils & local community teams

Working with local authorities

Council community teams and local development staff can help residents discover Patrol, or talk to us about a small local pilot with community groups in their area.

Patrol is not an official council service, does not replace council reporting channels, the Gardaí or emergency services, and reports on it are not verified by any authority.

Talk to PatrolFor councils & community teams