Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Daly for giving consideration to the Bill. The first question concerned how effective changing penalties or extending or increasing penalties will be. It is difficult to give an assessment as to how effective any criminal sanction is. Many criminal offences are increasing notwithstanding the fact that they have very significant penalties to them.

There is another part to why we include penalty provisions in our legislation. What it does is reflect how serious the Oireachtas regards the offence as being. We have a mandatory life sentence for murder. In terms of knife crime at present, under the law the maximum penalty that can be imposed is five years. In terms of the effectiveness of it, it may not be the case that changing penalties makes it more effective and reduces the number of offences but what it does is indicate to the public and persons that this is an offence that the Oireachtas regards as reaching into the more serious realm. That can be effective in itself. When legislation is going through, sometimes there are views about how long the penalty imposed in the legislation should be. Probably in the Oireachtas, we do not give sufficient consideration to the type of penalties that should be imposed and perhaps a greater variety of penalties should exist but certainly when it comes to criminal legislation, we are really limited if we want to communicate to the public the seriousness with which we regard the offences and with which we want the courts to regard these offences by looking at the penalty provision or the maximum penalty provision.

The Deputy also asked about the percentage of cases dealt with on indictment. I do not know.

The penalty that exists at present is not working. Obviously, our population has increased significantly which may explain why the offences are also increasing. When we look at the statistics the An Garda Síochána has presented, it is clearly the case that more young men and boys are carrying knives. I do not think there is any doubt about that and that numbers are increasing. We can just ignore it and say, "Okay, that is something we have to live with. It is a phenomenon in our society that we are going to have to accept", or else we can try to send a message not simply through education but also through legislation.

Increasing penalties might not result in the numbers decreasing in the short term, but the message will be sent out that it is regarded by the Oireachtas and consequently by the courts as a very serious offence. Those are my answers to the Deputy's questions.