IT COULD have been worse. The Department of Justice might have sent the Minister with a large Band aid for the prison system and left it at that.

But Ministers linked changes in the prison regime with a list of judicial and administrative reforms.

And Ms Owen even talked about community involvement in combating crime. Some of the reforms were long promised, a carry over from the Labour Party's shopping list when she went into government with Fianna Fail in 1992. But others, such as the regionalisation of Garda structures, were championed by Ms Owen in recent months and are quite innovative.

Court reform, involving the appointment of 15 more judges, is overdue, along with a review of the financing and operations of the courts system. And extra prison, places are a vital ingredient in, addressing the "revolving door" syndrome in our jails.

Having promised 10 per cent more prison places within the next year, the Minister is now considering legislation to extend the grounds on which bail can be refused. A referendum on the subject will probably be required.

She also intends to provide for seven days' detention for suspected drug traffickers under a Bill which will be published within two weeks.

The package is interesting. But it falls far short of what is required to confront the long years of neglect and the worsening law and order situation. Stop gap measures are all very well in a crisis, but more fundamental action is required to bring the system up to date.

Given the vested interests involved, it was obviously too much to hope that this Government with 1/2 years to run would take action where its predecessors had failed. Creating an independent prisons authority, as recommended by the Whitaker report, through slicing one third of its responsibilities off the Department of Justice, is still a bridge too far.

The Conroy report of 25 years ago and the current pleas of Commissioner Culligan are being consistently ignored where a redefinition of the role and functions of the Garda Siochana, and its resources, are concerned. And as the competing Garda Representative Association and the Garda Federation remain locked in an aggressive dispute, public confidence in the police force has diminished.

Reports of Garda officers refusing to leave Border postings because of a potential loss of income of poor general discipline of a lack of care and response to citizens who have been the victims of crime and of widespread double jobbing with in the force add up to a worrying catalogue of shortcomings. And the citizen is rightly concerned.

The deafening silence from the political establishment on these matters is equally worrying.

Politicians are the public's watch dogs where failures and weaknesses in public administration are concerned. If they do not bark, who will" be driven to reform the system?

Members of all political parties at Leinster House are in general agreement that morale within the Garda is bad and that performance is quite often poor. But they are afraid, really afraid, to say so publicly. Retribution from such a powerful vested interest could have a devastating impact on a political career.

Government sources say there is no possibility of a White Paper on the role, priorities and funding of Garda being produced by this not, which has less than two years to run. It would, one official said, be like "asking a guy to get on the back of a tiger without telling him when he might get off".

The best the Government could offer would be legislation designed to bring the public dispute between the Garda Representative Association and the Garda Federation to an end, and to introduce regional Garda structures, with more local control.

MS OWEN appointed five new regional heads to this structure yesterday, with bases in Sligo, Galway, Cork, Mullingar and Kilkenny. It is an important development and should help to increase the efficiency of local policing.

It might also, in the near future, prompt the emergence of similar regional structures in Northern Ireland. But, in spite of this initiative, the general tenor of the law and order package has been reactive, rather than creative.

There is much of what the public wants to hear. More prison places stricter drugs laws new powers of arrest and detention more judges and courts and special detention schools for children aged under 16.

The multi layered approach to crime advocated by Labour Party and Democratic Left Ministers, and supported by Fine Gael, was underplayed yesterday in favour of a more traditional, Department of Justice response. "Bleeding heart liberals" cut no ice with the law and order brigade which has been setting the political agenda in recent days.

Ms Owen recognised yesterday that she was in the "political hot seat". But, she said, the temperature was still bearable. Now there is a woman tempting fate