Ms Tara Buckley:

On the theft issue, there are a couple of things. We are appreciative of the work being done by the Oireachtas. The Minister for justice has set up a retail crime forum and we are appreciative of that and making inputs into that. Members understand at this stage the huge problem we have. We really need to see a lot of things done like Garda presence on streets. One of the issues for us is the system. We want to see quicker results for somebody who has been caught shoplifting. At the moment, the system does not work. We need a better system.

We also have young people who are out of control, and we need to look at how that is managed. It probably needs an interdepartmental way of looking at it. There is this antisocial and really aggressive behaviour by young people who think they are untouchable. We end up with the poor business owners and their staff having to put up with really bad abuse and young people saying that they cannot be touched. They just do not seem to care. We really need to stamp that out. We have to look at how we address that and manage it. It seems to me that elements from social welfare, education and all of the other Departments need to come together to look at how we address that. That would be really appreciated by us. One of our members in Limerick had to go to hospital last week because he was bitten by somebody in the shop. This is unacceptable. We employ a lot of young people and people with disabilities. We try to set up a good atmosphere in our businesses for our customers and staff. What they have to put up with daily is just not acceptable. It is making it difficult. Some of these people do not want to go to work because they are stressed. It is totally unfair. When people are attacked in the shop, they are sometimes put off by the system they have to go through. They do not want to have to go into court to make statements. These are people who work in shops. That is not really what they want to be doing.

As to retail defamation, the issue used to be slips, trips and falls. With a lot of work the Oireachtas did, for which we thank it, we have addressed duty of care and sorted out a lot of that area. People have slipped now into retail defamation, so they pretend to steal from us. They come in with something they have brought themselves or have in their bags and they pretend to steal from us. We have to protect our businesses. Somebody in the store politely challenges and asks the individual to show the receipt or proof of payment. The next thing it is a court case and people are being dragged down to defend themselves in court. We win the cases, but we do not get anything. They appeal to a higher court. We never get our costs back. It costs us between €30,000 and €50,000 to defend a case. We would like it so that we do not have to go to court if we politely ask somebody. We agree we should if we defame somebody, but not if we politely ask somebody.