Mr. Desmond Crofton:

There is a broad church on this side of the room which would favour - in light of our experience of the past five years in particular, which has been characterised by rancour and adversarial positions being taken - a centralised system. Nobody here is suggesting for one moment that the Garda Síochána should not be part of that system. Everybody is of the view that the appropriate body to vet applicants is the Garda Síochána. I do not think anybody has an issue with that, good, bad or indifferent. Where the system breaks down is in terms of the administration or the movement of the paperwork, leaving the assessment of the character of the applicant to one side. A centralised system would bring clarity and consistency to the situation. It would also allow for the build-up of expertise that is consistent in order that we do not have situations like the one referred to by Mr. Hannigan, where two members of his organisation who happened to live in two different Garda divisions got two different decisions on their licence applications which seemed to defy logic.

The various organisations involved in shooting published a critique last May of the operation of the administration of the system over the past five years. We sent a copy of that critique to every Member of the Oireachtas. That critique set out the problems in the system and the concerns of the representative bodies, based on practical experience. It should be noted that the report and recommendations that have been published since have not addressed or even considered a single concern outlined in the aforementioned critique. Indeed, it did not even merit mention or acknowledgement, which is very telling. It is also very telling that the proposals which seek to address the public safety risk from unlawful access to firearms, albeit that the potential source is not a real issue, do not include a single new penalty. That is significant in our view. If one wishes to address an issue of criminality, one normally addresses it by looking at the penalty structure in place, but that is absent from this set of recommendations.