Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

——and a very serious offence for which the penalty is life imprisonment. I heard Deputy O'Keeffe on radio discussing whether we should regard hostage-taking as a separate species, so to speak, but we should remember that the penalty for false imprisonment can be life imprisonment. I do not want to speak entirely off the cuff, but perhaps a case can be made for a minimum sentence where a threat is made to the life of an individual. Almost anything, even putting someone in a cupboard, can be false imprisonment, but when someone's life is threatened for the purpose of committing another felony, there may be a case for a minimum sentence. We could consider that on Committee Stage of the Criminal Justice Bill.

It is true that depending on one's definition of a gang, there are between 15 and 30 groups of people here who confederate to commit offences. At this stage I do not want to say much about them, but in case the Deputy thinks these figures are conjured up, I have seen spreadsheets with the names of people involved, an elaboration, a map, so to speak, of how these gangs are organised and inter-related. It is not as if the Garda is blundering about with no strategic view of the problems.

Deputy O'Keeffe should note that there is a clear pattern of people who in the past were members of paramilitary bodies, now using for their private ends all the thuggish skills they developed and the mercilessness they exhibited, threatening and killing innocent people, and shooting people in the head. On a number of recent occasions, intelligence briefings have suggested to me that former so-called patriots have now taken to the most appalling thuggery to enrich themselves.

Regarding firearms, the theft of shotguns in particular is a serious matter. One of the proposals among the Committee Stage amendments of the Criminal Justice Bill is to create a mandatory regime for secure custody of firearms in the houses of those who have them for lawful purposes. I will deal with that on Committee Stage.

See this speech in context