Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I could rehearse the statistics for last year about the most serious categories of crime but that will not do much for Donna Cleary and her family or for anybody else who is killed. A Criminal Justice Bill is before the House which can perhaps assist in this but a great deal of legislation has already been passed, including legislation on sentencing for drug and gun crime. The Criminal Justice Bill contains provisions to strengthen the investigative powers of the Garda Síochána in terms of powers of arrest, search and detention, taking fingerprints and DNA samples, strengthening the criminal law, mandatory sentencing and other issues, and builds on the tough measures included in the Criminal Justice Act 1999 which provided for ten-year mandatory jail sentences for anyone convicted of possessing drugs with a street value of more than €12,500.

We have enacted legislation dealing with crimes of a sexual nature, such as the Sex Offenders Act, the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act and the Sexual Offences (Jurisdiction) Act, and a range of public order legislation. We have introduced Operation Anvil for which significant resources and numbers of gardaí have been provided. Resources have been given to gardaí at all levels.

I concur with Deputy Kenny that the legislation in the system will help to build on the existing tough legislation. Firearms legislation is an important issue and may be of assistance because increasing numbers of people have access to firearms and, as in this deliberate and random case, people resort to guns over relatively trivial arguments. We are seeing more of that and, in terms of gun crime, we should certainly try to strengthen our laws. I have no argument with Deputy Kenny on speeding up the passage of that legislation.

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