Mr. Noel Dunne:

Absolutely. I was getting to that. I very much welcome that we can get areas where people could be barred from. I absolutely welcome anything that helps. Of course that would help but the point is to get it to act as a deterrent. When we go to court we must see that the person in court is going to have some sort of sanction. Anecdotally, I was in court with one gentleman who I had caught robbing. He was up on the stand and the garda read out that this was his 95th appearance on shoplifting. I presumed in my naivete - a number of years ago - that this was going to be a big sanction. He walked out of the court with me with nothing but a hand slap. It is a half a day for me to go to court. If I go at 10 a.m. I must wait to be called. How can we go to court with every single incident? All of this notwithstanding, if I went to court and I knew there was a possibility of the person being sorted out and that there was going to be a sanction this would help down the line as I would go to court with everybody. We would see a huge rise in the numbers of incidents reported to the Garda immediately.

I welcome Operation Táirge. It is really good they are tackling organised crime but as Mr. Jennings has said, this will not stop what we are here to discuss today, which is the petty thieving from the small stores.