Law-and-order plan has the backing of some real experts

ONE party that cannot be accused of having little first-hand experience of the issues it is campaigning on is Sinn Fein.

Introducing its manifesto on Monday, the party pledged to make the fight against crime one of its priorities. It promises that, if elected, its candidates will work for a more efficient court system, an upgrading of rehabilitation and training in prison, and the monitoring of some offenders after their release.

These policies are no doubt influenced by the experiences of the 25 per cent of the party's candidates who have direct experience of courts, prisons and the rehabilitation of offenders.

Martin Ferris, the Sinn Fein candidate in Kerry North, served 10 years in Portlaoise Prison after being found on the trawler Marita Ann with seven tonnes of arms for the IRA. Don O'Leary, the candidate in Cork North Central, was sentenced to five years for IRA membership in 1987.

Kiernn McCarthy, standing for the party in Cork East, was sentenced in Antwerp to two years after arms were found in his flat. And Owen Hanratty, one of two Sinn Fein candidates in Louth, was sentenced to two years in 1975 for possession of a firearm.

Such experience at the coal-face of the criminal justice system undoubtedly gives great authority to the party's emergence as a champion of law-and- order.

One wonders, however, who is to do the monitoring of former prisoners if not the Garda, one of whose members, Jerry McCabe, was murdered during a mail van robbery in Co Limerick on June 7th last.

Sinn Fein, of course, refused to condemn that murder because it did not wish to engage in the "politics of condemnation". If only our courts were so reluctant to pass judgment, the problem of prison overcrowding would soon disappear.

LAST week Fianna Fail promised to bring down the cost of motor insurance for young drivers. Using the money from the "PMPA levy" on non-life insurance payments, it will set up an academy to provide intensive driving-skills courses.

Graduates will be able to demand "the adult rate of insurance and get no-claims bonuses quickly after completing the course."

This is indeed a brilliant idea. The only problem is that it is such a good idea that it is already in operation.

The Irish Insurance Federation already runs, in conjunction with the Driving Instructors' Register, an "insurance incentive scheme". Under it, young drivers who complete a 25-hour advanced course can qualify for a 10 per cent no-claims bonus in their first year of licensed driving, saving them on average £150 to £200 on their premiums.

The Fianna Fail proposal would really have the effect only of transferring the cost of doing this course from the drivers themselves to the State.

But Fianna Fail is very confused about how the scheme would actually be paid for. Its proposal to do so from the £28 million it supposes to be raised by the "PMPA levy", a sur-charge on insurance companies to cover claims that might arise after the collapse of the old PMPA in the 1980s, faces the slight difficulty that the PMPA levy was discontinued in 1992.

The £28 million figure actually refers to the sum raised by stamp duty on insurance policies, a part of normal tax revenue. What Fianna Fail is actually proposing to do, in other words, is to have the Exchequer subsidise motor insurance for young drivers.

If promises by Seamus Brennan, the party spokesman on transport, to bring down the cost of motor insurance sound familiar, that may be because we have in fact heard them before.

It was he who assured the nation in the past that the abolition of juries for insurance cases would result in substantial reductions in the cost of motor insurance. The juries were abolished. The premiums did not come down.

And for the record, the Irish Insurance Federation, whose members have 97 per cent of the Irish motor insurance business, is not prepared to guarantee that the implementation of Fiannn Fail's proposals this time will lead to a drop in premiums.

That will happen, it says, only if there is a "sustained and noticeable reduction in the cost of claims." It is, in other words, and unlike Fianna Fail, making no promises.