A SPECIAL anti crime unit with radical powers should be established at once to "take back the streets" from organised criminals, Labour party backbenchers have said.
A sub committee of the party's Policy Development Commission yesterday launched a paper entitled The Drags Menace and Organised Crime just hours before the Government unveiled its plans to counter the crisis. The document has the full backing of the Tanaiste, Mr Spring.
However, Young Fine Gael instantly denounced the package as being "cobbled together" and "a public relations stunt". The party guilty of "shameful hypocrisy" because it had "stalled the bail referendum after it was announced last year".
Deputy Roisin Shortall, who chaired the Labour sub-committee, said the document was prepared and ready for release last week before the barbaric murder of Ms Guerin but publication was delayed as a mark of respect to the dead journalist.
The paper had then sought to generate a sense of urgency about tackling the drugs problem and the organised criminals "behind this odious trade".
"We had hoped that this document would play a part in putting the drugs crisis at the top of the political agenda. Sadly, it no longer needs to serve that function," said Ms Shortall.
With Ireland facing a drugs epidemic, a crisis response was required. One of the key suggestions of the Labour party paper was the establishment of an organised crime unit which would have powers of search and arrest, entry and seizure, confiscation and sequestration.
The powers of the Revenue Commissioners should be transferred to this unit and the body should also have access to all revenue and social welfare files. It should also have forms of surveillance now vested in different agencies. The people in the unit, from inside and outside the public service, should have full Garda protection and be "dedicated to the eradication of organised crime".
The body would "radically extend the co-operation that has been much talked about between different authorities" but must operate within the law. "In the medium term, we need to examine the possibility of developing this unit into a National Drugs Enforcement Agency.
Headed by an independent person with the same status as the Director of Public Prosecution, the NDEA could have "national responsibility" for investigation, detection and prosecution of drug dealers.
The Labour document also suggests a co-ordination of anti drugs measures, including the appointment of a minister of State to deal with the problem. This minister should be allowed to attend Cabinet when drugs were on the agenda.
A Dublin drugs strategy should be established because of its unique problem. This strategy group's membership would be drawn from senior people in each of the relevant agencies the Garda, the Eastern Health Board, Dublin Corporation as well as community and voluntary representatives.
The Labour document also proposes the deployment of more gardai in the fight against drugs special officials in the office of the DPP and in forensic science laboratory to deal exclusively with drug offences drug treatment in prisons awareness programmes in schools and a mass media campaign.