Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I thank Deputies Jim O'Keeffe and Ó Snodaigh for what they said. The purpose of this section is as set out in the original scheme of the Bill which, as Deputy Jim O'Keeffe stated, sounds right. We must ask, however, whether this is the right way to do it. I am conscious of the fact that we began with the proposition that anybody who got a one-year sentence was walking into this repeat category. I came to the conclusion that if these were serious offenders and were getting one-year sentences, the threshold was clearly too low before this response would be triggered. I believe, therefore, that a five-year offence distinguishes burglaries or aggravated burglaries from run of the mill offences into which people might blunder.

There is another point, however, which is that burglaries are not what this legislation is about. There may be serial burglars, and burglary can be committed in broad circumstances. Burglary and robbery sounds terribly serious but, in fact, a mugging amounts to a robbery, so that is why I want to take them out.

Having listened to Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Jim O'Keeffe, I will have to go further in all of this, tying it down much more narrowly. That is because, although it is possible that a gang will engage in trafficking illegal immigrants, it is equally possible that somebody who had nothing to do with such things could get done twice for that kind of offence — or once for that kind of offence and once again for another offence.

Looking at the list, we have cast the net too widely. I would not like to call my approach a blunderbuss one, but there has been a scatter-gun approach to the category of offences with which we are dealing. Serious offences, including kidnapping, murder, the use of firearms or explosives, aggravated burglary, drug trafficking and organised crime offences, are most likely to be committed by gangland people. If that is what the Bill is all about, we should contract the number of offences more radically than envisaged by the amendments I have tabled. I do not regard the Constitution as some kind of inconvenient obstacle in all of this area.

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