Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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150. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if there are data available on the number of prosecutions for the illegal removal of a clamp under the Criminal Damage Act 1991 in each of the years 2019 and 2021. [50422/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy will be aware, prosecutions are a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions, who is independent in the exercise of her functions under Section 2(5) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1974 (as amended). As Minister for Justice, I have no direct role in prosecution matters.

To be of assistance, I have contacted the Court Service and asked them to provide the information requested.

I am advised that while the Courts Service do have offence codes for criminal damage, the type of property damaged is embedded as free text into the offence wording, and it is not possible to run a report to extract the specific information requested by the Deputy.

As such, the Courts Service does not hold complete statistical information on the illegal removal of a clamp and the statistics as requested by the Deputy, cannot be provided.