Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Some of the questions I wanted to ask have already been addressed. Mr. Curran called for the segregated recording of business crimes. I have been told by community groups that they feel disheartened about reporting crimes to gardaí but they need to continue to do so. At the political level, crime statistics need to be recorded to identify black spots, etc. If something is brought to my attention I can put down questions asking for the statistics. I also understand there is a person behind the statistics.

Can the witnesses flesh out the points they made about the decriminalisation of small amounts of drugs? This is connected to petty crime. Have studies been carried out into this suggestion? Can the statistics be benchmarked against other areas? The counterargument is that people progress from one form of chemical dependency to a deeper form of dependency.

As part of the action plan for rural Ireland, CCTV is being rolled out in a number of different towns, including in my own area. Have the organisations been consulted by the local authorities about the positioning of these cameras? When I was growing up, banks were the target for crime and there was a lot of security in a bank, although there is not so much now as many transactions take place electronically. There now seems to be a shift towards luxury products or chemicals. Are there differences in the way luxury items and chemicals are pursued?