Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I thank Deputy McGrath for publishing the Bill. It never ceases to amaze me the range of subjects falling under the remit of the Department of Justice and Equality. I never envisaged that scrap metal would be an issue for the Department of Justice and Equality but c'est la vie. I apologise to the Minister in advance because I will not be able to wait for his response.

There is an issue in this area. Drilling into the crime statistics of the past year, we would see a trend of robberies and criminal activity on monuments, motorways, sculptures, churches and personal property. Either personally or through dealing with friends or constituents, all Members have experience of items of small jewellery of major sentimental value that, when stolen, cannot be traced or found.

On the legitimate side of the argument, there is a growing trade in scrap sales over the past 18 months. Often, these are organised with good intent for community organisations or clubs or to assist people clearing a property or farm property. The cash for gold industry has mushroomed as a response to the difficulties in which people find themselves. The illegitimate side of the argument includes non-registered traders calling to people's properties and farms, making offers, targeting older people living on their own and acting in a threatening or aggressive manner in the pursuit of these products. The difficulty arises because the area is unregulated with the result there is a loss of ownership. Where one buys something legitimately, we need to ensure the legitimacy around that transaction is carried through to the end of the sale, and what Deputy Mattie McGrath proposes will allow us to do that.

Deputy Keating made a few interjections about his worries for legitimate business, and he is correct. The last thing we need is to put more pressure on legitimate businesses but there is a problem here. If this Bill is accepted, we can work through it onCommittee Stage to ensure that the legitimate trader gets protection from it. Where a legitimate trader genuinely buys a product from somebody not knowing that it may be of dubious background or may have been acquired illegally, he or she deserves protection. However, where he or she knows it is of dubious background or where knows it was acquired illegally, as some of them do, then he or she should pay the price. We should ensure that all along the chain of transactions in this area there are records kept and there are sanctions for those who would seek to sully the name of the legitimate operators.

Surely there can be nothing wrong with what Deputy Mattie McGrath has proposed in terms of obliging dealers to retain proof of identity from previous sources in a day of invoicing being tracked and registered, for both VAT and Revenue purposes, not to mention for the restrictions on this Bill.

Nobody can have any major problem with a 30-day rating period for goods through consignment either. Perhaps that is an area through which we can work, defining "consignment" and what it involves. It also provides protection and time for persons to research what they are getting involved in.

I acknowledge, as Deputy Mattie McGrath has done, the work of Muintir na Tíre in this area. Muintir na Tíre is a superb organisation working through the community alert scheme. Its members are completely exposed to the pressure that many in rural communities are coming under because of the activities of some in this trade. It has written to all of us in support of the aspirations of the Bill and we should listen to it because it has a presence the ground, through the community alert programme, which we do not praise enough and to which we do not give enough support in this House. They see the pressure people are under.

When one looks at the high profile cases to which Deputy Mattie McGrath referred, there are now no bounds to how far people will go when they will go into Holy Cross Abbey and do what they did, take out a safe and take out the metals within that safe. Then there is the other extreme of the person, I think, called "Ireland's dumbest criminal", who last week locked his compatriots into the safe. All for scrap metal.

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