Following the submission in 2004 of a report and recommendations by an expert group on crime statistics, it was decided that the compilation and publication of crime statistics should be taken over by the Central Statistics Office, as the national statistical agency, from the Garda Síochána. The Garda Síochána Act, 2005 consequently makes provision for this and the CSO has established a dedicated unit for this purpose. Following the setting up of the necessary technical systems and auditing of the data from which the statistics are compiled, the CSO is now compiling and publishing criminal statistics and has published provisional headline crime statistics since the third quarter of 2006. In addition, it has compiled and published a series of quarterly and annual statistics for the period starting with the first quarter of 2003. I understand that the CSO are examining how the crime statistics published might be expanded and made more comprehensive. I have requested the CSO to provide the statistics sought by the Deputy directly to him.
The Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act, 1990 sets out very strict provisions for the control of knives and offensive weapons. The Act makes it an offence for any person, irrespective of age, to:
possess any knife or any other article which has a blade or which is sharply pointed in any public place, without good reason or lawful authority;
trespass with a knife or any article made for causing injury to or incapacitating a person, and
produce any article, capable of inflicting serious injury, in a manner likely to intimidate another person in the course of committing an offence or appearing to be about to commit an offence or in the course of a dispute or fight.
Any person found guilty of such offences is liable on conviction to a fine or imprisonment for a term of up to five years or both.
A person found guilty of murder through stabbing or otherwise is liable to the highest possible penalty of a mandatory penalty of life imprisonment.
The legislative provisions dealing with offensive weapons, and any other measures which might be taken to counteract this problem, are kept under constant review by my Department.
Prior to the commencement of the new sentences for a range of firearms offences provided for in the Criminal Justice Act 2006, an amnesty was granted for persons who were in possession of firearms and offensive weapons, including knives, to dispose of them.
As the courts are, subject only to the Constitution and the law, independent in the exercise of their judicial functions, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on penalties handed down by the courts.
I have the power under the Garda Síochána Act to set policing priorities for the Garda Síochána, and I am in the course of determining these priorities for 2008. One of the areas I intend to prioritise is targeting the use of knives in violent attacks.
