A new rural safety plan, which is set to run from 2022 to 2024, will be launched at this years' National Ploughing Championships and will focus on areas such as reducing property theft and animal crime.

The plan will be launched by Minister of State at the Department of Justice James Browne on Wednesday 21 September.

The plan identifies five key priority areas which include community safety, burglary and theft, roads policing, animal crime and heritage crime.

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In the case of reducing the number of burglaries, promoting and encouraging community-based alert and property-marking schemes in partnership with rural stakeholders is on the agenda.

Property marking programme

James O'Neill is founder and CEO of Property Marking Ireland, which is a company that has been set up to roll out a property marking crime prevention programme.

The programme, which is part of the rural safety plan, involves marking items of property so that it can be returned, if stolen, to its rightful owners.

“The gardaí recover about 30% of stolen property every year, but they are only able to return about 4% to its rightful owners because there's no unique identifier on it that brings it back to the owner," James told the Irish Farmers Journal

As part of the property marking programme, the owner's Eircode is put on to the piece of property.

"We carried out a pilot programme about five years ago in the Cavan/Monaghan Garda division.

"In Monaghan, the local authority purchased the property-marking machine and we had signage erected in the community and towns in Monaghan saying ‘property marking in operation here’.

80% reduction

"The chief superintendent reported back to the group about 14 months later to say that there was over 80% reduction in property crime in Monaghan. That was the beginning of us knowing we were on to something,” he said.

In the last five years, Property Marking Ireland has marked over 600,000 items of property and the programme is being delivered in over 20 local authorities.

"Interestingly enough, Cavan and Monaghan are as busy marking property now as they were in the beginning.

"If we look at bicycle theft alone for rural areas, you are five times less likely to have your bicycle stolen in Cavan/Monaghan than any other rural county.

"The programme has two objectives. [The first is] to reduce the level of property crime, which in a farming context costs about €4,200 for every farm family affected - this is about €10m per year in the construction sector.

The second objective of the programme, he said, is to reduce the fear of crime – particularly among older people.

Ploughing demonstration

Over the three days of the ploughing, there will be a property marking stand in the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) tent with IFA crime prevention executive Barry Carey and An Garda Síochána present.

The programme will be explained to patrons, along with demonstrations on how the marking machine works.