Mr. Mark Dennehy:

As we said, the word "resemble" is used in the legal definition of an assault rifle. I mentioned in my opening statement that there were many daft areas and anomalies in Irish firearms law. This is one of them. The law considers a semi-automatic or an automatic rifle, or something that looks like one, to be an assault rifle. Somebody has to make a judgment on what a rifle looks like in order to decide what kind of licence - for example, an unrestricted or a restricted licence - should be issued for it. Unrestricted and restricted licences are not like supersets of one another. I cannot get the harder version and expect it to cover me for the other case. It is like a motorcycle licence and a car licence - if I have a licence for one and I am stopped while using the other, I will be for the high jump. It is the same with firearms - if I have a licence for an unrestricted firearm and I am told that I have a restricted firearm in my hands, I will be in trouble. The same applies the other way around - if I have a unrestricted firearm in my hands and I am found to have an restricted licence, that licence will not cover me. Given that the only way to tell whether one licence or the other should be obtained is to get somebody to say, "that looks like this to me," and bearing in mind a severe penalty of up to seven years in jail and a €20,000 in fines applies in this area, I suggest there is a problem with the law. It is a legislative issue that should have been fixed a long time ago. We brought it up at the time, but it is still an issue.