The Mizen Community Safety Project advise of a new joint venture project between Muintir na Tire and Neighbourhood Watch. The project called Operation I.D. involves the use of state of the art property marking equipment (see photo)  which can be used to mark household, farm and boating equipment. The aim of the scheme is to reduce property crime. This is a pilot scheme – the first of its kind to take place in Ireland.

Muintir Na Tire and Neighbourhood Watch have worked for over 30 years in partnership with An Garda Siochana to help reduce crime and the fear of crime in both urban and rural areas.   Three Muintir na Tire community councils and other local community groups in the Mizen area of West Cork are launching a very exciting and innovative property marking scheme.   The launch took place on Sat 20th Feb at 4pm in the Harbour View Hotel in Schull, where a large crowd was in attendance.

 Items such as bicycles,  laptops,  music equipment and mobile phones can easily be stolen and quickly passed on. The same applies to farm equipment and items such as power tools,   chain saws and lawnmowers etc.   

Ballydehob, Schull and Goleen Community Councils are going to roll out this property marking initiative over the coming months. Volunteers in the 3 communities will be trained to offer a call out service to each household to mark their valuables with a unique code which will be the eircode that all households received in the post in the last few months.   This eircode is unique to all households and will act as an effective crime deterrent and will help reduce burglary thefts.  The property marking scheme will also be offered to mark all boating equipment in the Mizen geographic area.

A similar scheme has been launched by North Yorkshire police in the past year with great results deterring thieves as well as increasing the chance of the police returning the items if stolen.

• The marking ID applied to your equipment will read as follows: MNT.IE  P81XXXX
• mnt.ie refers to a website run by Muintir Na Tira, where a secure database will be maintained.
• P81 – is Skibbereen Area  Of your Eircode
• XXXX – is last 4 characters (number or letter) of the eircode  listed to your registered home/house.