David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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That cost is obviously made up somewhere else by passing it on to other customers who are not shoplifters. We are probably all paying for this indirectly. This might seem to be a silly question but is there any insurance cover for this kind of stuff that is going on in any instances or is that possible? The witnesses are shaking their heads so, no. I will not go any further down that route. In the presentations, a number of themes came up. One theme mentioned was feral youths coming into shops and who intimidate and maybe physically attack people. That is one particular group. Underage people were also mentioned and Tusla is involved there. The second theme that came up was organised criminals who focus on high-value items. The third theme is, and I have seen some documentation on this, with the advent of scanning machines - somebody of my age would find these things hard to work sometimes - a person goes up to the scanning machine and it does not work and they pop the thing in the bag keep going. I have seen evidence from the UK and other places that these scanning machines actually encourage theft from shops by people who would not even consider this in the first place. There is no way of checking. I know that sometimes shopkeepers are afraid to challenge people because they might be set up to have a false accusation made that can also lead to costs for retailers. Would anyone like to comment on those three issues?