The Government’s new property marking rural crime prevention initiative has been welcomed by independent TD Carol Nolan – but a “more sustained, coordinated approach” to rural crime is needed.

The Offaly TD was responding to the Government’s ‘Property Marking Ireland’ programme, which calls on property owners to mark items with their eircode.

The aim of this is to prevent thieves from selling these items on, preventing rural crime and making it easier to track down the owners of stolen goods and return them.

The scheme was launched by Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment Richard Bruton and Minister for Justice and Equality Charlie Flanagan, who called on farmers, householders and business owners to avail of the initiative.

Commenting, deputy Nolan said: “Any measure that improves the probability of rural communities retrieving stolen property is to be welcomed.

“I can only hope however that this scheme is more effective than the almost identical Theft Stop Initiative from last year that quite frankly, proved to be an abysmal failure and had very poor participation rates before it was abandoned by government; despite all the hype surrounding it.

There is also a sense that, while schemes like this are positive, surely what we need is greater attention on the prevention of theft rather than trying to address it after the fact.

“To that end rural communities clearly need a more sustained, coordinated approach to increasing Garda visibility and presence in our towns and villages.

“If three government ministers – two of them very senior cabinet members – can come together to launch this scheme then surely they can do more in terms of delivering a more effective cross-departmental approach to rural crime.