Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I agree with the Minister entirely on that. However, I honestly believe that language loses its meaning if we suggest that is what we have. Is there a country in the entire EU that is more rigorous about the licensing of firearms than ours? I do not believe there is. I am very happy to modernise the law and tighten it up further. However, until the Minister persuades me to the contrary, I have very serious reservations about the impact on respectable law-abiding citizens engaged in a sport, which does not attract me personally. It is a sport that is recognised internationally and shooters compete internationally. The Bill contains provisions about prohibiting certain kinds of weapons and provisions about slowing down the renewal of licences, which they believe will cause them gradually to go out of business.

Laws are cheap and so is the publicity Ministers can get. However, we also need investment in the service that enforces those laws. Garda numbers were set to reach almost 15,000 by the end of 2009. However, because of early retirements and drastically reduced recruitment this figure will not now be reached. Reforms are desperately needed in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to bring the numbers back up. We desperately need gardaí walking the beat, visible on public transport and visiting schools. We need gardaí visible in communities they know and serving people they know in order to make a real impact on crime and anti-social behaviour.

It is also to be regretted that the Minister has ignored the opportunity presented by the introduction of this legislation to respond to High Court criticism of the hotchpotch nature of our law on firearms as it stands. The court as recently as 4 July 2008 criticised the piecemeal spreading over multiple pieces of legislation of the statutory rules for the control of firearms. It stated that it was undesirable and that codification in this area was almost as pressing as it is, for example, in the area of sexual violence. Instead the Bill proposes to make further extensive amendments to our firearms control laws and will exacerbate the piecemeal and fragmented nature of this important area of the law.

Fragmented laws and untracked amendments can result in errors on the part of both the prosecution authorities and defence lawyers and the subsequent misapplication of the law by the courts. This is apparent from a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal given on 24 March where the court declined to follow a previous decision that was based on the interpretation of a statutory provision that had been effectively repealed and replaced at the time the decision was pronounced. The Minister ought to be bringing before the House today proposals for the necessary reform of the Firearms Acts into a single, comprehensive, updated and consolidated code.

Sometimes I am amazed that practitioners of the law in various parts of the country who have to rely on the Law Society Gazette are able to stay abreast of developments given the ad hoc manner in which amendments were made over the years. We are adding to that problem with this Bill.

I am sure the Minister genuinely wants to control firearms but his subliminal message about those who raise questions regarding his approach to the matter is that they are not on the side of the angels. I share the Minister's objective of putting crime bosses and gangs out of business, but no matter how hard I look, I cannot find evidence that thugs and gangsters are sourcing weapons from law abiding citizens with licences to hold handguns. Certainly, firearms are stolen from members of the farming community because the use of shotguns is unsurprising in rural Ireland and they are not generally protected in the same fashion as weapons held by gun clubs. From my observation, such thefts are a fairly minor occurrence. It appears more common that crime bosses purchase guns from the same sources outside the country who supply them with drugs. We should not give the impression that we are dealing with that scourge.

As has been noted previously, the present gun control regime is much more rigorous than was the case prior to 1972 because of the decisions which had to be made on foot of circumstances in Northern Ireland. If the Minister is prepared to accept amendments preventing legitimate handgun holders from being put out of business, this Bill will be welcome in terms of further tightening these controls.

I concur with Deputy Charles Flanagan regarding knife crime. I am not sure if he mentioned the 16 responses on Twitter. The Minister for Defence, Deputy O'Dea, receives more responses to his articles in the Sunday Independent. Perhaps he should be diverted from his other duties in order to write articles on this subject in that newspaper because he could thereby reach a larger audience than the cyberspace initiatives of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

The Minister spoke about extensive consultation and claimed that nobody will be surprised by the content of the Bill. I was informed that the consultative panel was not shown what some of its members regard as controversial proposals. Again, therefore, his claims of extensive consultation diverges by 180° with the views of people who believe they should have been consulted on and allowed reasonable time for responding to measures to which they take exception.

He adduced in support of his argument the remarks made by Mr. Justice Charlton. However, one can find other judges who take differing views. I tend to agree with the Minister that we ought not to mistake this for an accretion of rights by the persons concerned but, nonetheless, judges differ when responsible people resort to the courts in this matter. It is not surprising that a member of the Bench would remark that ordinary people are alarmed by the difficulties we face in regard to gun crime. Violent incidents occur almost every weekend and the contention between bosses for supremacy and the profits flowing from the drugs trade is often settled by guns. I have yet to be shown a jurisdiction in which the clamping down on legitimate licensed firearms holders diminishes the flow of guns to criminal gangs. That is the only point I am raising with the Minister and if he can provide evidence of such a connection or that the Bill will help to address the issue, I will accept his proposals.

It is important that the Minister confirms he is not alleging the existence of a gun culture in this country. We certainly have a problem but this involves illegal guns. That is a horse of an entirely different colour and any measures the Minister can devise to clamp down on those who possess illegal weapons will have the full support of the Labour Party. Even his own figures are not sufficient evidence to support the contention that stolen licensed handguns are being used in the terrible crimes being committed in many parts of urban Ireland.

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