Business 'under siege' from criminals, says SFA

The Director of the Small Firms Association, Pat Delaney, has told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights that the small business community is under constant siege from criminals.

Delaney told the Committee of TD's and Senators that the Small Firms Association fully supports the development of Community Policing in Ireland but this could not be taken in isolation to the manifest problem of crime being faced by society as a whole and in particular the small

business community.

Delaney stated: "The latest figures available from the gardaí for 2003 show that the number of headline offences reported to the Gardai was 103,360. The number of convictions achieved to date is 4,411.

"The figures for 2002 show the number of headline offences reported then was 106,415 which

resulted in 6,739 convictions. From these figures it appears that Irish criminals are living in a crime utopia with very little chance of ever being brought to justice, leaving the victims of crime in a sense of hopelessness and despair."

"Either all Irish criminals are masterminds or we need to have a major overhaul of our policing system with greater resources invested and better results achieved in both prevention and detection of crime," he added.