Paul Bradford (Fine Gael)

I will have fewer focail than the last speaker. Unlike the Minister and Senator O'Donovan I do not have a legal background and expertise. Those who have can approach Bills with a great degree of certainty and understand their definitions and limits. My comments in support of the Bill will be from a common sense perspective.

I welcome the Bill and the fact it follows a promise our party gave in advance of the last general election. It may have been Jim O'Keeffe, the previous speaker's constituency colleague, who published a Private Members' Bill some years ago. As a result of that, much other work and a number of high profile cases the Minister has introduced the Bill to the House today.

There has been a lot of debate on victims and prospective victims of crime over the past number of years. There has been a need for a certain rebalancing. There may have been populist hearsay, but it appeared for some time that all of the rights were with a criminal or a prospective criminal and victims and prospective victims appeared to have no rights whatsoever. In that regard the Bill is helpful and it is to be hoped it will send a strong signal to people who may be considering committing a crime against a household to reflect on their actions.

It is not an extreme measure, it is balanced. I am sure the Minister would agree that we do not want something akin to the situation pertaining in many other civilised countries such as the United States, where the issue of the right to bear arms and the right to use them almost at will is a mandatory requirement for somebody wishing to seek elected office or stand for the presidency. The right to bear arms can be taken to extremes but this is a very balanced response. The definitions of what is and what is not allowed, residence and curtilage is very helpful.

This week the Minister said a number of Garda stations across the country will have to be closed. It is unfair for the Government side of the House to say that but we have to discuss such issues. We have to try to ensure that the rate of burglary is kept to an absolute minimum. The Bill will probably apply more to rural and isolated than urban areas. Schemes such as community alert groups and neighbourhood watch need to be supported because they have a role to play in trying to reduce the number of crimes being committed. If we can reduce the number of crimes being committed and contemplated the effect of the Bill will not be required. That is the key point.

The figures I read in the very helpful research we received from the Oireachtas Library on the number of aggravated burglaries in the country showed that while the problem is under control the numbers are too high. Too many crimes are being committed. Prevention is always better than cure. I am not talking about preventing someone from shooting a man who is about to rob a house. Prevention starts at an earlier levels in terms of trying to insure people do not presume a life of crime. Active community gardaí who liaise with citizens and neighbourhood groups will help to keep crime numbers as low as possible.

There was a demand from the public when there were a number of high-profile cases, including the gentleman in Mayo whose case became national front page news, that we would respond to this issue. The Minister is responding in a fair and balanced fashion. The Bill does not give a householder or citizen an absolute right to carry a machine gun and mow down anybody he or she feels is a threat to his or her property. It is putting in place legislation to provide a defence in the few instances - it is to be hoped they remain few - where a householder feels obliged to take very strong action against an intruder, be it male or female, who is robbing his or her house, threatening to do so or attacks his or her property.

The Bill is as good as it can ever be. There will always be anomalies which need to be examined and hard law cases before the courts. It is a reasonable response to problems brought to the attention of the Minister's predecessors over the past decade or so. I am sure it will be passed unanimously by the House. If one stopped a man or a woman on the street and did an opinion poll on common sense it would be the view of the public that householders must have a certain degree of right to protect themselves and their property, and the Bill is responding to that demand.