Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

This is not a conversation. I am supposed to be answering questions. I am not engaging in conversation with the Deputy.

Regarding the firearms amnesty, it was agreed during the passage of the legislation through this House that it would be wrong to organise an amnesty in which weapons could be handed up anonymously because murder weapons could be handed up in those circumstances which would prevent any proper investigation. Deputy O'Keeffe sought in the meantime to renege on what was agreed in the House and to suggest that the firearms amnesty was a failure because it did not have the numbers that would follow from a completely anonymous amnesty. The Garda Síochána advised me, and the House accepted at the time, that the amnesty should be done on the basis that anyone handing in a firearm would do so in circumstances——

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