Mr. Mark Dennehy:

On the question as to what changes we would make, having studied this for ten years or so – ten years I would like to get back, to be entirely honest – there are definitely things that are broken. For example, it is not right that since 2009, those at stag party paint-balling in Wicklow for a weekend are committing a breach of the Firearms Act. Technically, that requires them to be put in jail for seven years and fined €20,000, along with everybody who works in the companies that run these services. I do not think anybody would think that is a great way to have the law. If hunters going out to shoot rabbits for the pot take a shot before they start hunting the rabbits to ensure their sights are aligned, that is technically target shooting outside of an authorised range, which is illegal act. The Minister for Justice and Equality at the time said afterwards that was an unintentional mistake in the law. There are many errors in the law to which we can point and that is really awful. There is the Firearms Act 1925 and there are eight more Acts which amend parts of it. Nothing has ever been repealed. There are another 12 Acts which have parts in them which define the behaviour target shooters and hunters are supposed to follow, including the Wildlife Acts, the Airports Act and the Explosives Act, which covers the reloading shooters do. There are Acts from before the foundation of State, including both of the Explosives Acts. The Summary Jurisdiction (Ireland) Act 1851 still applies. It relates to how far away from a road one has to be before one can start hunting bunnies. There is no single place a person starting off in the sport can go to see what the rules are to which they must adhere. Before we start to make any changes to these things, and there is a list, we need to have a solid base from which to work.

What has to be done is that all of those nine or ten Acts, which amended the Firearms Act, need to be restated under a Statute Law (Restatement) Act 2002. That was called for by the Law Reform Commission in 2004 and by Mr. Justice Charleton in the High Court a few years ago but it has never been done. The Law Reform Commission has prepared informal restatements of these Acts. The only textbook ever written on firearms law in Ireland, which was only just published last year, has a restatement in one of the appendices but that is not the same thing as a restatement of the Act under the law, because at that point, we would take all that has gone before it, repeal it and replace it with the Firearms Act, as amended, and we would have a single document to which we could all go.

If we do that, then we can start to talk about the fairly silly things in it that need to be fixed. For example, if I am doing my Christmas shopping and I walk into a popular shop in a popular shopping centre and see a shelf full of toy crossbows being sold – they are obviously toys and are meant for firing suction darts at walls and so on - under the current Firearms Act, they are restricted firearms.

These are obviously toys and meant for firing suction darts at walls and this kind of thing. Under the current Firearms Act, these are restricted firearms and need to be licensed. If a person does not have a licence for it, he or she faces seven years in jail and €20,000 in fines. This is beyond silly.