Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, to the House. I was impressed by the concern expressed by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and the moderate tone in which he spoke. We have a large problem with gun crime and the danger is we could bend over backwards in an attempt to solve it and still fail. One reason we have not been able to fight crime in the past is because we have been too protective of the accused to ensure no one was ever wrongly convicted. On occasions, we have bent over backwards to protect the accused and the guilty rather than protecting the innocent. I remember 12 years ago the journalist, Veronica Guerin, spent a day in Leinster House with me and listened to a debate in the Visitors Gallery. It was three weeks before she was killed. The criminal laws that we passed until her death were not strong enough because there were many voices of concern about going too far. After her death, the catalyst which changed matters, we introduced legislation that got the balance a little bit better. Even in 1996, we were not speaking of the extent of the gun culture we now have.

I was pleased the Minister referred to an €18 million investment in the Garda pathology laboratory to assist in DNA testing and recording. There will be howls of protest about individual's privacy and data protection but we need this investment. When I met Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, he informed me he had introduced DNA testing and a database in New York. The liberal attitude was negative to this. In one of the first instances of using DNA testing, however, he was able to prove the accused was not guilty because it was someone else's DNA on the murder weapon. He used it as an instance to remind us that there are times when legislation, introduced to protect those who might otherwise be innocent, actually saves the wrongfully accused. We need strong criminal legislation that can be enforced and takes into account the rights of the innocent.

While the majority of firearms licences are for hunting rifles and shotguns, target shooting also has a long history in Ireland. In August 1972, the then Minister for Justice, Mr. Des O'Malley, made an order under the Firearms Act 1964 that all private, registered pistols and rifles above .22 calibre be handed in for a maximum of one month. The one-month temporary custody order was extended by successive Governments for 32 years, however, which had a major impact on shooting sports. The extension of the custody order was only brought to an end in 2004 by a constitutional challenge by a private citizen. Within three months of the ban being lifted, an Irish target shooting team competed in the Austrian open shooting championship and took six podium places. A balance needs to be taken into account. I was pleased the Minister acknowledged his proposed legislation on firearms would take into account shooting sports and may include limited exceptions to the handgun ban for use in Olympic sports.

The number of handgun licences granted has increased significantly since 2004. According to Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform figures, of the slightly more than 233,000 firearms licensed in the State, more than 177,000 are for shotguns with rifles accounting for 54,000. In July 2008, Mr. Justice Peter Charleton said there was a pressing need for drawing together into a clear law the multiple piecemeal rules on the control of handguns. He said reasonable people were entitled to feel alarmed about a substantial increase in the number of pistols licensed for private use in recent years.

The increased growth of gun licences, in the four years since the High Court overturned the 30-year ruling banning them, is astonishing. In addition, 1,263 registered firearms, including 27 handguns, have been stolen since 2003. Something has to be done about this increase in gun ownership.

However, the argument that gun murders will go down if there is a ban is irrelevant. Drug dealers will not worry that their illegally held handgun will have to be handed in at their local Garda station. In the UK, pistols were banned between 1997 and 1998 yet murder rates increased in the period. This emphasises the simple fact that civilian ownership of lawfully held firearms has little or no effect on crime rates.

This debate can easily overlook the root cause of much of the gun crime — drugs. Unfortunately, so many drugs get into the country and almost all of the recent drug seizures have happened owing to accidents caused by bad weather, ships breaking down, etc. Tackling gun crime is inextricably linked to criminal gangs and drugs. While banning handguns is a media-friendly initiative, there must be a real drive to limit the importation of drugs to stop the power of criminal gangs. This is the real root problem of gun murders.

The real problem that must be addressed is not that there are more guns on the streets but that there is more circulation of guns. One gun may be used by several individuals in several different crimes. Guns are now often sold on or rented out. For instance, a weapon used in a shooting in Limerick may be linked to a murder in Dublin or elsewhere. We need to ensure we are accurately keeping track of these weapons used by several people. The national ballistics intelligence programme, a police database, was launched this year in the UK to keep track of such weapons. In America, the integrated ballistics identification system does a similar job. We must ensure the ballistics section of the Garda technical bureau is given adequate resources in this fight, as good as in other countries, before introducing blanket bans.

The problem of improvised weapons, that is of replicas converted to fire live ammunition, will become an even larger problem. This aspect of weapon conversions may be of as much importance as the banning of conventional handguns. I welcome the moderate tone taken by the Minister but also his tone of concern. The actions he is taking are in the right direction. I welcome this debate before the Bill is introduced in the new year. I hope we will have a chance to go through it and ensure, in doing so, that we save lives.