I have to ask myself, when I see this Bill, what its purpose is. The purpose of a Bill is by no means always, or even regularly, revealed by the explanatory memorandum which goes with it. I recall being in a public controversy about three years ago in connection with the Criminal Justice Bill in which the Private Secretary to the then Minister wrote to the papers stating that it was no purpose of an explanatory memorandum to say what the objects behind a Bill really were. According to him, and presumably according to the Minister standing behind him, the purpose of the explanatory memorandum was simply to paraphrase in simple language the provisions of the Bill itself. I was able to show that there were many explanatory memoranda in which the public official concerned had gone a bit further and, whether by accident or otherwise, had explained in clear language what the purpose of the Bill was. I was contradicted by the Minister's Private Secretary in a second letter which said that, if this was ever the case, it was merely a slip. Apparently it was not public policy for the Department of Justice or any other Government Department to say in their explanatory memoranda just what Bills are intended to effect. That means that, in spite of the expense and trouble involved in issuing an explanatory memorandum, every Member of both Houses and every member of the public must do his best to read between the lines to see what the Bill is getting at.
I look at this Bill and I am told in the explanatory memorandum that its first purpose—I am not alleging that any attempt is being made to pretend that it is the main purpose—is to adjust the scheme of penalties so as to differentiate between fowling-pieces, as one might call them, and lethal or military-type weapons. I have no objection to reducing or perhaps even doing away entirely with the penalty in a case where the penalty serves no purpose, but I see no point in going to the trouble of reducing a penalty here when it is within the discretion of a district justice to impose a penalty far under the maximum. It is a discretion that is regularly used in this and in many other offences.
When I look at the Department of Justice and look at the colossal logjam of law reform announced in their programme in 1962, a programme which they are not getting ahead with, when I think of the State Proceedings Bill that we have been promised, the Deserted Wives Bill and the Courts Bill that we have been promised, the Marriages Bill that we have been promised—when I find these things being put on the long finger and this Bill introduced into the House quickly, I have to ask myself what is behind it? Can it really be that there is a public necessity to reduce the penalties for the more innocent form of retention of firearms without a licence?
If it is not that, can it be then that the main purpose of this Bill is to increase the penalties for the holding of the more lethal forms of firearms without a licence? That, on the face of it, might we a plausible reason for the introduction of this Bill. But I have to ask myself here again how much diligence the State has shown in recent years in prosecuting offences under the existing law? How many convictions has the State succeeded in getting under the existing law? Does the State really think that to increase the penalties of the existing law will be an effective deterrent to people who really intend to secure and keep firearms in order to endanger the lives and property of others?
I have no statistics at my disposal but I would be interested if the Minister would tell the House at some later stage how many prosecutions under the section we are dealing with, which penalises the unauthorised possession of firearms, have been initiated here in the last three years and how many of these prosecutions have been followed by convictions? Does the Minister seriously think that the situation will be changed in the slightest degree by merely intensifying the penalties in regard to one particular kind of maintaining firearms without licence? In other words, that ostensible purpose behind this Bill I regard as eye-wash.
I am not against the Bill. I see nothing objectionable in this proposal to reduce these penalties and to increase the others, but I regard them as eye-wash or so much window dressing. The real point of this Bill—and let us spell it out for the people north and south so that they can hear it— is contained in section 4. It is to enable the courts in this jurisdiction to operate beyond any shadow of doubt when they are confronted with a situation in which somebody is charged with an offence under the Act but who is able to say to the justice, as has happened in a recent case: "These guns are for use in the North of Ireland."
I do not want to be accused of rocking the boat, and I think that all parties in both Houses of this Parliament are at one, and have declared themselves as being at one, in their desire to use peaceful means and only peaceful means in their approach to the North. I hope that anything I say will not be interpreted as meaning that I believe the existing Government or the existing ruling clique in the Government not to be sincere in that approach. I believe that the Taoiseach and those of his existing Ministers who are at present on top of the heap believe sincerely that that is the right approach. I in no way wish to cast doubt on their sincerity in this regard. They wish to prevent violence in the North so far as they can do so.
However, this Bill will not do it. It is a slovenly Bill and a Bill which is intended merely as a piece of window dressing to impress the people in Belfast, or perhaps the people in West-minister from whom the pressures may come, and to impress people outside the boundaries of the State. Not enough care has been devoted to it, within the State, to make sure that it will be really effective for this purpose, namely, to reduce violence in the North of Ireland.
I shall now point to three lacunae in this Bill which convince me that it will fail in its main purpose. I believe its main purpose is hidden behind the carefully drafted words of section 4. First of all, this Bill in no respect whatever—unless I have misread it or unless I have overlooked other legislation which should be taken in conjunction with it —tightens up the law regarding explosives as distinct from weapons, firearms or ammunition. The definition of ammunition in the Firearms Act is something on which one could argue. I do not want to hold up the House unduly but let me read the definition:
The word "ammunition", except where used in relation to a prohibited weapon, means ammunition for a firearm but also includes grenades, bombs and other similar missiles whether the same are or are not capable of being used as a firearm and also includes any ingredient or component part of any such ammunition or missile.
It could be argued that two pounds of plastic explosives or six sticks of gelignite fall under that definition, but it is by no means clear to me that they do. The word "missile" seems to mean something which achieves its lethal effect by being despatched through the air. It is a word which, I think, is not very far away from projectile. I would be, if I were a district justice or a judge, in severe difficulty if I were asked by the State to say that a satchel of plastic explosives or gelignite fell within the definition of "ammunition" in the Firearms Act. I want to point out to the House and the Minister that there is nothing in this Bill that I am aware of—naturally, no more than anyone else. I am not infallible; I may have missed some point—which tightens up the law in regard to explosives other than ammunition for firearms.
Not alone does the Bill not contain a satisfactory amendment of the definition of "ammunition", but the Bill does not contain any clarification of, or extension of, the Explosive Substances Act, 1883, which is the Act still in force here in regard to the possession of explosives. This old Act, passed four years before Queen Victoria's golden jubilee and still in force here, except for a minor repeal in section 7, provides punishments for persons who have in their possession explosive substances unless they can show that it is for a lawful object. In my view section 15 of the 1925 Firearms Act requires clarification in the way that section 4 of the present Bill proposes to provide it. Equally, section 4 of the 1883 Explosive Substances Act requires the same clarification. When we mean "endangering life and limb" we mean endangering life and limb outside the Republic as well as inside it. It is equally necessary to say that the possession of explosives inside the Republic is an offence if it is intended to cause damage or to cause danger to life and limb with these explosives outside the Republic.
I have no particular partisan feeling about this because my party, as Senator O'Higgins has said, believe, and have always believed, in a peaceful approach to the North and in law and order within our own boundaries and outside of them. I, in no way, wish to say that my objections to this Bill represent a core of Fine Gael thinking which is opposed to what Fianna Fáil are thinking. My objection to it is that not enough thought, of any kind, has gone into this Bill. It is a mere going through the motions to satisfy, perhaps, the Government in Belfast or the Government in London that the Government here mean what they say. I think the Government do mean what they say. At least those who are at the top of the heap at the moment mean what they say about a peaceful solution in the North. I do not think, for a moment, that the Taoiseach or Deputy O'Malley desire bloodshed in the North but this Bill will do next to nothing to prevent it. I want to make that perfectly clear to the House and to the people.
I would have thought that a Bill like this, amending the Firearms Act, would have devoted some thought not merely to the question of possessing firearms but also to the question of importing firearms, a delicate subject litigated not very long ago in this city. The section dealing with the importation of firearms is section 17. That section is not touched at all by this amending Bill. If the Government are seriously concerned with what I believe the purpose of this Bill is supposed to be, preventing or forestalling bloodshed in the North, it should be possible to extend this Bill by a section which would make it an offence for someone in this jurisdiction to procure, conspire to procure or incite the importation of firearms, ammunition or explosives into the North of Ireland, whether through the Republic or directly into the North of Ireland. That should be an offence. All of us here condemn it. All here would condemn any citizen of the Republic who, no matter what his motives were, imported lethal objects into the North of Ireland. Why not say so in this Bill, which is supposed to reform and amend our firearms law?
The section about importation of firearms has been left unamended by this Bill. If we are so concerned about making it plain that the prohibition and penalty attached to section 14 for possession of firearms with intent to endanger life includes endangering life in the North of Ireland we ought, in logic, to extend section 17 to make it clear that we also regard as an offence the action of anybody here who conspires to have firearms imported into the North of Ireland or procures or incites their importation there. It will only be when the Department, and the Minister in charge of it, take their responsibilities seriously and give this matter serious thought that we will impress the people we so genuinely wish to impress with our intentions in regard to peace in the North of Ireland.
Another matter which seems to deserve attention in a Bill amending the Firearms Act is the question of collections of firearms. By "collection of firearms" I do not mean the blunderbusses, antique jezebels or roaring megs that Senator O'Higgins spoke about. I mean the kind of people— and there are some of them in the country—whose hobby it is to collect fairly modern firearms. A few short months ago a man in the Republic— I am speaking from memory now but I think he was a dancehall owner—was robbed of a very large and lethal collection of modern firearms which he was keeping, no doubt perfectly lawfully, as his own hobby. A Bill which proposes to amend our law on firearms ought to impose some kind of limitation on these collections, not because I think it wrong for a man to have such a hobby, but because it represents a temptation to the kind of subversive group we are dealing with in this country to rob him and get possession of a large quantity of usable, modern weapons.
A Bill which proposes to amend our law on firearms is not doing its job in this respect any more than in the other respects I have mentioned unless it deals with this question of collections and imposes some limit on the degree to which a private citizen, who has no particular means of looking after weapons, is allowed to amass in his house a collection of submachine-guns, pistols or rifles. I cannot remember precisely what the collection of weapons was in the case I have just quoted but I recall that a private citizen who, no doubt quite lawfully, was in possession of firearms was robbed of those firearms.
It would not be unseemly or unfitting if this Bill were amended to contain a further section giving the police an additional discretion in the case where a person held more than two or three licences for firearms to apply stricter standards to the issue of the licences. In other words, the police authorities would have, for example, to be satisfied that these were kept in such a way as to make their robbery extremely unlikely. Of course there are very few citizens who can say that about their houses, and the effect of that might be to kill these private collections of firearms. I would be sorry if people's legitimate hobbies were interfered with in that way, but it seems to me that there is something deadly at stake here. It would be no harm if hobbies of this kind, which are potentially lethal to others, were sat on by the State. I am amazed at the fact that a Minister coming in here —with a long string stretching back to 1962 of law reform measures piling up in his Department—coming in here with this measure supposed to reform our law on firearms should have overlooked this thing which was occupying the headlines here only two or three months ago.
The last thing I should like to say— perhaps it is more a Committee Stage point, and if I mention it now, I sincerely mean this, it is only to give the Minister's advisers a chance to look at it. I am not sure whether I am correct about this, I am far from being an expert on firearms, and I may be wrong, but I thought I should mention it. Section 3 proposes to insert new subsections which take out of the category of newly controlled arms shotguns having a barrel of not less than 24 inches in length or an unrifled airgun or a rifled firearm of a calibre not exceeding .22 of an inch. I am not an expert on this but my impression is that there are such things as .22 pistols which are lethal. Whether they are rifled or not I cannot say, but it is conceivable that there might be hereafter produced such a thing as a rifled .22 pistol or a rifled pistol of a lesser calibre than that. If I am right about that, and I may be wrong—obviously the Minister has got better advice at his disposal than my own fleeting recollections from the reading of thrillers and from general knowledge—but if I am right in thinking that there are such things as pistols of a .22 calibre or a smaller calibre, whether rifled or not, then I think this subsection should be extended in such a way as to impose a minimum length on the permissible weapon. I am bearing in mind what Senator Jack Fitzgerald said about the .22 sporting rifle. But even having regard to his objection, I think this subsection should be extended or changed in such a way as to leave within the area of stricter control even .22 firearms which are of a lesser length than the ordinary .22 sporting rifle. I am completely out of my depth here, and I may be wasting the time of the House by mentioning it, but I would like the Minister to ask his officials at least if there was any substance in that point.
These, then, are my comments on the Bill. This party has no objection to the Bill. I have tried to tell the House my view on what the main purpose of the Bill appears to me to be, and I have tried to explain to the House why this Bill is not going to achieve that purpose, because it is missing at least three components which I would have thought vital if it is to achieve it.
