§ Mr. William RossTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will publish a table to show for each year or financial year since 1972 in(a) Belfast and (b) the rest of Northern Ireland, the number of terrorist firebomb attacks, the amount of damage, the number of persons who have (i) been arrested, (ii) charged and (iii) convicted in respect of the attacks and the rate of convictions.
§ Dr. MawhinneyI regret that the information requested is not available from existing records.
697WThe best available relevant information is set out in the table. This shows, for each year since 1974, the number of incendiary devices which have exploded or have been defused in Northern Ireland. It also shows the number of persons charged with and convicted of explosives offences (it is not possible to identify separately explosives offences in which an incendiary device was an ingredient).
Incendiaries exploded/ defused Persons charged with explosives offences Persons convicted for explosives offences 1974 270 161 1— 1975 56 100 91 1976 236 215 80 1977 608 146 146 1978 115 79 78 1979 60 40 72 1980 2 39 50 1981 49 39 28 1982 36 41 39 1983 43 48 31 1984 10 21 18 1985 36 37 33 1986 21 31 32 1987 9 22 28 1988 8 29 33 1989 7 24 30 1990 33 22 21 1991 237 24 2— 1 Not recorded. 2 Not yet available. Note:
(a) Statistics on charges and convictions are kept according to the most serious offence with which an individual has been charged. The figures above do not therefore include persons convicted of explosives offences who have also been charged or convicted of a more serious offence, eg. attempted murder.
(b) A person convicted in a particular year was not necessarily charged in the same year.