John O'Donoghue became Minister for Justice in June 1997, on the cusp of a new era. There were the beginnings of a downward turn in crime after almost two decades of annual rises. The introduction of anti-organised crime legislation and new Garda drugs, criminal assets and fraud bureaux were beginning to target our most notorious criminals.

The period since has seen the greatest Garda successes against organised crime since it became a feature of life in this State in the 1970s.

However, the coincidence of his succession to office and this beneficial turn in events was not entirely accidental. As Minister and previously as Fianna Fail spokesman on Justice, Mr O'Donoghue can claim to have been at the centre of the State's successful battle against organised crime.

It was his private members' Bill while in Opposition in 1995 that was taken on board by the Department of Justice to produce the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996, after the murder of Veronica Guerin.

This Act, which provides the legislative basis for the Criminal Assets Bureau, is admired by justice officials throughout Europe. It has been recommended as a model for anti-organised crime legislation for all EU states by the Financial Action Task Force, the high-powered group set up to devise ways to counter organised crime and money laundering in the EU.

It is likely to be copied abroad, something of a first for Irish anticrime legislation which had traditionally mirrored other countries' laws.

Senior gardai and Government officials remark that it has been a characteristic of a generation of governments that they talked tough about crime but fail to implement strong measures against criminals.

The main State apparatus for countering serious crime had diminished almost to non-effectiveness by the mid-1990s, according to some senior officers. The Republic was being used as a shipping station for international drug traffickers.

By 1996, Dublin detectives were warning that organised criminals had reached the point where they would begin to take on the structures of justice in the State the way the Mafia had done in southern Italy. The murder of such a public figure as Veronica Guerin showed how these organised criminals had begun to feel invulnerable.

In Opposition, Mr O'Donoghue was almost virulent in his attacks on what he perceived as the complacency of previous administrations' records on law and order.

In office, he has been unswerving in implementing the anti-crime measures he preached in Opposition. The mandatory 10 years' imprisonment for possessing £10,000 worth of drugs he touted in Opposition came into law during the summer, in the 1999 Criminal Justice Act. It is one of the most draconian piece of anti-drugs legislation to be found in Europe.

It is measures such as the mandatory sentences and his hardline speeches, including the use of "zero tolerance" terminology, that have earned him a reputation among some sections as a unreconstructed "flog 'em and hang 'em" figure.

However, this interpretation does not sit easily with his apparent respect for such liberal agenda notions as restorative justice and prison education.

Restorative justice is the system which tries to make young offenders confront the reality of their actions and make amends to their victims, to keep them out of the courts.

In a little-recorded speech to a conference on restorative justice in Dublin in April last, Mr O'Donoghue spoke in favour of some key restorative justice principles and has included such elements in his Juvenile Bill due out in January.

He has just provided £4 million in the Budget to educate young offenders in prisons. Most young offenders are semi-literate and fail to gain employment on release. It is hoped that educating and giving them work skills will reduce re-offending.

The new, larger prison system will not simply give the State more ware housing for criminals. It will also provide improved, more humane conditions for prisoners.

The whole thrust of the current penal legislation is to provide adequate prison space and to keep young people out to as great an extent as is possible. The additional prison spaces should allow the implementation early next year of the 1997 referendum restrictions on bail.

Domestic law and order issues aside, Mr O'Donoghue and his senior civil servants have also been heavily involved in the negotiations in the North leading to the present hopeful situation. In spite of his work in the North, he has a much lower media profile than the Minister for State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell.

He has also had a prodigious record in the Dail, overseeing the enactment of 24 Bills since assuming office. This is a record for any minister for justice. His Department's output is prodigious and officials say he, as a lawyer, takes a strong interest in all legislation they produce.

He is steering a further 26 Bills covering immigration, children's rights, equal employment status, human rights and juvenile offenders through the Oireachtas.

Legislation enacted since his arrival covers child pornography, employment equality, parental leave, prison transfers, the antiterrorist legislation after the Omagh bombing and the setting up the National Disability Authority.

Officials also point out that unlike some predecessors who allowed junior ministers oversee the passage of legislation, he has seen everything through the Oireachtas himself.