Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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1123. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of persons sentenced to one-two, two-three, three-four and four-five years for possession of a knife in a public place without lawful authority in each of the years 2019, 2020 and to date in 2021, in tabular form [30753/21]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I have contacted the Courts Service to obtain the information requested by the Deputy and have been informed of the following.

There are two offences relating to the possession of a knife or other article in a public place without reasonable excuse or lawful authority under the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act 1990 (as amended).

Section 9(1) and 9(4) offences may be tried summarily or on indictment, so many of those offences would be sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court. At this time, the system in use by the Courts Service in the Circuit Courts is the Integrated Criminal Management System (ICMS). ICMS cannot produce reports for specific offences. The only reports which are available are by offence category rather than for individual offences. It is therefore not possible to report on the length of sentence imposed.

In the District Court on summary conviction, the maximum term of imprisonment is 12 months. There have been no sentences imposed for 12 months imprisonment in the District Court for 2019, 2020 and the period of Jan – April 2021( the date latest figures are available for).

I can advise the Deputy that the following tables list the overall numbers of convictions and persons convicted in 2019, 2020 and for the period of Jan - April 2021 in the Circuit Court:

Table 1: The number of convictions and number of persons convicted for Possession of Knives and other Articles under Section 9(1) Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990

Table 2:The number of convictions and number of persons convicted for Possession of Flick-Knife under Section 9(4) Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990

It should be noted that the Courts Service can only provide data in relation to where offence codes provided on the system were used by prosecutors. Prosecutors may have used uncoded free text offences and any such offences would not be included in the data provided.

A person may be convicted for both offences and will appear more than once on the report.