Property marking machine on council’s Christmas wish list

CHIEF executive of Carlow Co Council Coilín O’Reilly confirmed that a new machine for identifying stolen agricultural and garden equipment would be “under the tree Christmas morning” at a meeting of the council on 8 December.

Cllr John Pender asked the council to consider purchasing the property stamping machine after speaking to a senior garda at a community meeting in Hacketstown with cllr Ben Ward. Carlow and Kilkenny are, supposedly, the only two counties in Ireland without this kind of scanner.

“It seems that they are available for a very modest fee,” he said. “They are a great idea and it’s a great deterrent for criminals that lift all this type of equipment. It’s a mark; it’s not quickly visible but it’s there forever on the equipment, so it has solved many a case around the country,” said cllr Pender.

Coilín O’Reilly confirmed that the council would purchase a machine for the gardaí, who could then make it available to community groups. “In fairness to An Garda Síochána, my experience in the past with them is they do have huge budgets, but it’s all for staffing. And actually outside of staffing, they have very little budget for anything else.” 

He said he would bring up the issue at the community safety partnership meetings that week. “That is the sort of joint, multisectoral approach to issues that we can do. The community staff can do marking and equipment days and stuff like that. We’re more than happy to do that,” he said.