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

I accept time has progressed, things have moved along and the Garda property app is up and running. However, few people know about that. It is not something the public is widely aware of and there is a job of work to be done around it in particular.

I accept there can be issues. GDPR arrived on the scene and it is one of those things that just smothers everything. No matter what one proposes to do or what anyone looks at anywhere in the world, GDPR is thrown up as the reason we cannot do it or cannot look at it. That is the world we live in and we must, of course, be conscious of people's data. That said, we also have to protect people and there needs to be some way of developing the Garda property app we have at the moment to make it more appropriate for people to access and use, because the vast majority of people do not use it, do not know it is there and do not have any clue about it, and that is clearly something that needs to happen.

The idea set out in this legislation by Deputy Ó Laoghaire was around ensuring that when gardaí found items they had strong suspicions were stolen, they would be able to trace them and find where they had originated from. When my house was broken into, the gardaí asked me whether we had photographs and this, that and the other so our stuff could be identified, but we did not have that. If all of us are truthful, we probably do not have those records. There is a space there that needs to be filled and possibly work to be done on a publicity campaign around all that. It might be an idea to have a day in the year when everybody should be taking photographs of their valuables and ensuring they have details of them recorded and retained in case anything ever happens to them. There are things we could do on that.

I accept that if the Government is not going to support the legislation, it is clearly not going to go anywhere. It is a Thursday evening, at the last sitting before the Easter recess with nobody else in the Chamber, so I am not going to keep us here forever talking about it, but the intention with the Bill was to find a mechanism to ensure people's property is better protected and that, if it has been stolen, it can be traced to the rightful owner when found. Often that does not happen and there needs to be a greater effort to do that. I welcome the Minister of State committing that there can be more work done in respect of that, including possibly expanding the Garda property app, as well as any other mechanisms that can be put in place. There is certainly the idea of having some publicity around all that to ensure people are more conscious of their responsibility to keep their property safe by recording it properly when they have it.

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