Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support the legislation. I submitted a parliamentary question on 13 November 2018 and I will give the reference number for the information of the Minister of State's officials. It was Question No. 277, reference number 46967/18. In it I asked specifically about the number of recorded knife crimes in the country. I subsequently received correspondence from the CSO, specifically from the crime and criminal justice statistics section.

It stated:

The Central Statistics Office, CSO, has taken the decision to resume publication of recorded crime statistics under a new category entitled statistics under reservation. This categorisation indicates the quality of the statistics do not meet the standards required of the official statistics published by the CSO. Please see the attached explanatory link ... Knife crime would have been for crime incidents where it had been indicated that a knife was used via the modus operandi, MO, data field. The CSO would have concerns that figures generated in this way could understate the true figure and, as such, we are not happy to release such data.

There is a serious issue with the specific recording of knife crimes which the CSO has pointed out. Since I submitted my parliamentary question on 13 November 2018, which is not too far off a year ago, I hope there is some improvement in the quality of the recording of the statistics in question. It would be useful if the Minister of State in his reply or his officials later could give me an update on this matter. If we are not dealing with real-time figures, we will not know the true extent of what is going on. We need a real picture of what is going on if we are to legislate efficiently and effectively on these matters.

As an aside, there was a Topical Issue matter before this legislation was presented. It would be a vote of confidence if line Ministers were available to take individual Topical Issue matters. It would stave off much of the tension created when they are not available. My colleague, Deputy Kelly, raised an issue concerning Tipperary.

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