Are gardaí doing enough to stop illegal fireworks? Not by the sound of itthese nights in the lead-up to Hallowe'en, reports Rebecca Little.
Fireworks are illegal in Ireland for personal use, yet for weeks now the sky has been lit up by them. Rockets and bangers may be against the law, but in the lead-up to Hallowe'en, it's easy to find them, buy them and get away with setting them off.
Most fireworks in the Republic come from Northern Ireland, where the legal age for purchase is 16. Fireworks can be bought with an easily obtainable licence for personal use. Licensed buyers must purchase from licensed sellers, who offer only those fireworks manufactured under UK safety guidelines.
But there are plenty of unlicensed retailers in Northern Ireland that provide substandard fireworks, produced without safety guarantees. These are usually made in China and are the most dangerous.
"People travel up North and buy bucket-loads and bring them down," says Garda spokesman Damian Hogan. "It's very hard to stop that from happening,"
Once the fireworks make their way into the Republic, they are easy to obtain. The going rate this week was €5 for bangers, €7 for air bombs and €10 for rockets.
One street trader and her young son were selling all three varieties. The woman was hiding the rockets and air bombs under her coat while the boy had the bangers concealed along the elastic of his sweat pants.
"This is a lucrative time for fireworks, so there are quite a lot of people selling them," says Hogan. "You can buy them at Sunday markets or buy them at a house where people know people are selling them. They're sold through word of mouth."
The laws against fireworks are full of inconsistencies. It is illegal to sell them, it is illegal to buy them, but is it illegal to set them off? Only sort of.
The two laws on the books that forbid fireworks date back more than a century. The Explosives Act of 1875 makes it an offence to throw a firework, and Section 4 of the Act, penned in 1883, permits Garda seizure of fireworks in a public place.
"In essence I suppose it is illegal to set them off, but it's not that specific in the law," Hogan says.
The punishment for selling, buying and "throwing" fireworks is a fine, not prison. The fines vary with the amount of fireworks seized - and the amounts have been updated since the late 1800s. Public fireworks displays have to be licensed and are overseen by pyrotechnics professionals.
Finian McGrath, an Independent TD for Dublin North Central who has been urging the Garda to do more to clamp down on firework use at Hallowe'en, says the punishment isn't severe enough.
"Is a fine adequate [for sellers\] if somebody blows their finger off?" he asks. "These dangerous fireworks end up on the street and end up hurting people. A fine may not be enough to discourage them."
According to Hogan, gardaí target the sellers to prevent fireworks making it to the streets. Gardaí have seized stashes of fireworks over the past month, with some of the largest hauls coming from Dublin city centre, Coolock, Ballybrack, Kilbarrack and Lucan in Co Dublin. On October 12th, gardaí seized more than 250,000 fireworks in Co Louth. Seized fireworks are given to the Army to be destroyed.
Hogan estimates the firework seizures in the run-up to Hallowe'en are worth more than €750,000.
Bangers and rockets have been going off nightly over the past few weeks. On Hallowe'en night, they will be projected into the sky, fired down streets and thrown in doorways and letterboxes. It is a flagrant flouting of the law, but Hogan says the gardaí can't be everywhere.
"We try to eliminate it as best we can. We're successful to a certain extent, but they \ are fairly easy to get."
Gardaí launched a campaign this week to show the dangers of fireworks, which result in mutilating injuries and burns every year.
"I don't go along [with the idea\] that you can't do anything, which I hear regularly from gardaí," McGrath adds.
"There are 12,000 gardaí in this State. I think that all the bicycle patrols and foot patrols have to be more proactive. You can reduce the incidence of bonfires and dangerous scenes of fireworks just with a sensible presence in the area."