Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

Indeed. I am not saying the two guys could be done for scrap metal but it shows the breadth of stuff with which we are dealing. There is a market for all of those goods and at present that market is unregulated. There is nothing to say that if that robbery had succeeded, and that man had not locked them in, they would have got away with produce that would have been sold into this market about which we speak.

The crosses, the monuments and the artifacts taken from Holy Cross were destined for an international market, probably for collectors who have no appreciation or regard for the belief and commitment of the people of this country and who are interested only in profit, and as of now, that is easily done because there is no way of tracking of this material or enforcing the need for dealers to be aware of this material.

As I stated, all of us will be aware of cases, be it Eircom or building sites, where copper has been stolen off site. It is a regular phenomenon and we must ask ourselves where it is going. This Bill, if accepted by the Government, will seek to regulate that as well.

In fairness, Deputy Mattie McGrath over many years he has been a proponent of less regulation and less legislation that gets in the way of doing business. He did not set out to heighten the regulation burden on business but if the Government were to accept this Bill, then we can work through all of those issues in committee.

There is a problem here and because it is happening randomly across the country, there is not an awareness of how serious it is becoming. There is a problem because those who legitimately want to raise funds for their communities through organising scrap metal sales are being exposed to the illegal market as well, unbeknownst to themselves, because there are no checks and balances in place to ensure that the material they seek to sell legitimately does not find its way to those with ulterior motives. We need to give them support and back-up. We also need to give the legitimate operators in this trade support and backup and extra powers to ensure that their reputations are maintained, nationally and internationally.

I note that the Bill gives further powers to the Garda and requires registration with the Garda Síochána. These are areas we need to work through with the Garda in terms of registration to ascertain whether we are placing an undue burden on it. There might be a requirement to register with the local authorities, which are probably better resourced to manage such a register and its activities. Deputy Mattie McGrath touched on that towards the end of his speech in terms of the role of waste facilities and waste providers in this as well.

Given the importance of the topic, the acceptance by everybody - I note there are many rural Deputies in the Chamber - that it is a growing issue here and that we should not hide away from it, I would hope that this gives us a framework where we can legislate on the issue to give the Garda and the local authorities the power to work on this. In the interests of us all recognising the problem, the Government should accept the Bill and work it through whatever changes need to be made on Committee Stage and Report Stage. At least we will seem to be ahead of a problem in the Oireachtas rather than reacting to one.

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