PREY AS YOU GO

THE Government plans to force new mobile users to provide ID before buying a phone in a bid to crackdown on gangland crime and drug dealing.

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy wants the new rules which he believes will interrupt the activities of drug dealers.

The Commissioner - who vowed that beating gangland crime is his top priority - was in contact with former Justice Minister Brian Lenihan about the problem. Gangsters and drug dealers regularly change mobile phones to prevent gardai from intercepting their conversations.

They can simply go into a shop and buy a pay-as-you-go mobile phone with cash for as little as EUR39 without revealing who it is registered to.

Originally the crooks changed SIM cards so they would have a new number, but they discovered that each handset has an individual serial number which can be tracked even if the phone number is changed. One Garda source said: "This is something that we've wanted for a long time.

"Unregistered mobiles are a major problem. The profits from dealing drugs are immense so the price of replacing the phones is not a problem.

"But if new phone owners were forced to show photo id before buying the phones, it will be far more difficult to get them. This will not interfere with the law-abiding phone users, but it is a major issue for gangsters and criminals."

Unregistered phones are also used to make hoax calls to the emergency services and even the Coastguard.

Because the phones are unregistered it is incredibly difficult for gardai to track down the hoaxer.

The Department of Justice has been working with the Department of Communications to draught new legislation. The source added: "Criminals are now very aware that their phones can be used against them. We now have intelligence that armed robbers are giving their phones to other criminals when they go out on a job to provide themselves with an alibi.

"They then claim they were in a different part of the country at the time of the robbery. Others simply leave their phones at home."

Mobile phone evidence was central in bringing wife killer Joe O'Reilly to justice. He claimed he was in Dublin city centre at the time of the horrific crime when his phone clearly showed he was at his house in the Naul in north Co Dublin.

O'Reilly even texted his dead wife Rachel on his way back into town after the murder in an attempt to establish an alibi. But gardai were able to determine that the text was sent just two miles from the O'Reilly home.

The Department of Justice had considered allowing conversations recorded during phone taps to be introduced during criminal trials, but the Attorney General advised that this would be unconstitutional.

But gardai are allowed to use phone taps to gather intelligence against criminal gangs.

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