Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The 2,200 firearms that have been seized since 2005 — 1,200 of them in Dublin and 1,000 in the rest of the country — are obviously illegally held. In recent times, it is clear that handguns have been used much more often by criminal gangs, due to the advantages of concealment. That is why we owe it to ourselves in this House not to allow for policy on the hoof, as per the decision made in 2004 by Judge Maureen Harding Clarke. I am not criticising the judge, but as a result of that decision, we have gone from a situation where zero handguns were licensed in the State to a situation where 1,800 handguns are now licensed.

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