Mr. Paul Maguire:

We found that it was easy to purchase a mobile phone. Even in the job we do we need to have different SIM cards and it depends on where one goes. One can go to different branches of a service provider or different providers and on each occasion one may or may not be asked for identification to purchase a SIM card or mobile phone. I am not here to comment on legislation, but to judge from what the superintendent said, mobile phones play a huge part in the operation of prostitution and other forms of crime. We put in place a simple system which recorded all phone numbers. We then analysed them and when we watched the differences between the numbers, we could, in some cases, identify eight out of ten sequential numbers which were being used in different patterns. If there was a similar record, it might go some way towards controlling the problem.