Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

The points made by Deputy Howlin are perfectly valid. Part of the difficulty in discussing guidelines and the shooting fraternity is that we are dealing with a totally different category of people to the shooting fraternity that we are trying to lock up because of their involvement in crimes with firearms. That is one of the difficulties and I argued strongly during earlier debates on this Bill that we should be dealing with the sporting shooting fraternity in a separate category.

Be that as it may, the Minister has insisted on going ahead with this approach so we are dealing with the genuine, law-abiding people who are involved in shooting for sport or for the control of vermin. In that context, the approach of the Legislature should be to ensure that the fullest consultation takes place in a transparent and open manner, in so far as the Garda Commissioner and the Minister are concerned. Provision should be made for consultation with representative organisations. The sporting organisations should be facilitated as far as possible and guidelines should not be hidden. If there are guidelines under which the system operates, they should be made fully available to such organisations. We should not have a Kafkaesque approach whereby organisations find themselves in a situation of being expected to comply with guidelines of which they are not aware.

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