Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This motion is on legislation on having a national property register, which was first initiated by my predecessor as spokesperson for justice, Deputy Ó Laoghaire. I commend him on his work in this regard. The Bill is a simple legislation. It proposes an Act to establish a register of personal property so that people can register it. It would be there for identification of items of personal property for the purpose of investigation of a crime and for the repatriation of such items if they were found to be stolen. We have seen this issue for a long time throughout the country. The issue is that many thousands of lives are negatively affected by the loss of property stolen from people. Many people have no way to get to work when their electric bike is stolen. They have a huge problem in that regard. Millions of euro in tradesmens’ tools over a period of a year or two can be taken from people’s vans. Tradespeople need the tools for their work. Thousands of bicycles have been stolen in the city of Dublin. There is a similar issue with farm machinery throughout rural Ireland. Some work has been done in regard to registering stolen property. All of us are encouraged by An Garda Síochána that when we buy an expensive item, be it a laptop or something that has a serial number on it, we should record the serial number and have that in place. In truth however, who among us ever does that? We probably do not. It is only when it is stolen and goes missing, that we realise that we should have done that.

In other jurisdictions, for example in Britain, there is a system called the national mobile property register. This is based in London. I understand that in one period, there were up to 40,000 searches in the database by the police every month and 20% of these searches return an item which is matched. The system works well in other jurisdictions. We need to try to use it here in Ireland. Of course the Garda in many areas of the country have a system whereby farmers were encouraged to bring in their farm machinery so that their eircodes can be etched on it in order that it can be traceable. The part that is missing is a national register that people can get onto. With the advance of technology which we saw with the Covid app, some type of app would be the best way of doing this. It would be easily downloadable and people could have it so that for any item of that nature the serial number or their eircode can be input, and it would be uploaded and available to and managed by An Garda Síochána so that when they discover items they would be able to trace them back to their rightful owners.

We are also aware of warehouses throughout the country that are full of stolen property for which Garda are unable to find the rightful owners. This is all about being able to help with that. Taisceadán, or An Taisce, which is Gaelic for treasure, is about locking away treasure and keeping it safe. That is where the name comes from. We are trying to come up with simple legislation which would provide a mechanism whereby people can record their valuable piece of property in such a way that it will be traceable and when An Garda Síochána find it in suspicious circumstances, for example we often have gardaí who visit marketplaces and find property, particularly tools, which they strongly suspect may not be from trustworthy providers but they have no evidence that it is stolen. If they were able to locate the rightful owner of this property on that app, it would make a big difference.

The issue we have with this is publicity. That is probably going to cost money. There needs to be a publicity campaign around this so that people actually use it and put it in place. It would be a valuable asset for An Garda Síochána to be able to trace the valuables they sometimes find, but also for the public to ensure that they keep the various pieces of property that we all have, safe. In some cases things get lost or are taken in various raids. Sometimes it may be tools. My house was burgled on a number of occasions down the years. On each of those occasions, a few things were taken. I love my wife dearly but I do not often give her gold, and gold is what they were looking for. Every press in the house was opened. They looked everywhere to try to find rings and trinkets, and took them. On another occasion when the house was broken into, they took the television, laptops and even suits out of the wardrobe. There are cases where they have a specific target and in other cases they have a different target. If we had a mechanism that the public was aware of, an app that is easily downloaded, even when people are selling things retailers would encourage people to register this on the app so that it can be traced. That would be a huge asset in crime prevention and detection as we move forward. I look forward to the Minister of State’s comments on this. I hope the Government will be prepared to support this small Bill, which will make a large difference to so many people who have been victims of property theft.

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