Mr. Desmond Crofton:

I can probably answer that for the Senator. It is not confined to guidelines, although there are published guidelines. There is a statutory instrument, a secure accommodation order, which is not primary legislation but secondary legislation. The Act in primary legislation sets out a requirement that the firearm must be held securely. The statutory instrument simply sets out the detail of that.

There are different levels of security depending on the number and type of firearm one seeks to own. There are three primary considerations in the grant of a firearms certificate, of which security is one. The others are suitability of the applicant and good reason for requiring the firearm. All of those must combine to direct a decision either to grant or to refuse a firearm.

In terms of the security of firearms, for some time we have been seeking to get an answer, and have not managed to get it, through parliamentary questions on the number of handguns stolen from firearms licenceholders since the new security requirements were implemented in 2009. Nobody has yet answered that question for us. I believe Deputy Niall Collins has asked the question, as have various other Members of the Dáil, and we still await that answer. I suspect that we will all be surprised by the answer to that. I think it will uphold the notion that it is not actually a problem area.