THE MINISTER for Justice and the Opposition yesterday traded pre election jibes on crime, with each blaming the other for the lack of prison spaces and claiming to have had a better record when in government.
Just hours before the Progressive Democrats published their crime policy document yesterday afternoon, Mrs Owen launched a pre emptive strike. Speaking to reporters in the pouring rain at the launch of a Fine Gael poster campaign ("we're not announcing an election campaign") she went on the attack.
"Before Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney lecture us any further about crime," she said, "they might explain why, when they were in government, not one penny was spent towards providing one single new prison place.
"The honest answer is that is why there is now a problem with early releases. Our Government is building new prison places; the extra 800 is an increase of one third on current capacity.
"Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney should hold back on their personalised abuse until they explain why their parties, when in government, did not hold a bail referendum, did nothing to help seize the assets of criminal bosses, ignored reform of the courts, ignored the growing drugs crisis, failed to resource the gardai with numbers and technology, and quite simply allowed a rot to set in."
By midafternoon a Fianna Fail statement had been issued saying that it was all Mrs Owen's fault. "The blame for the shortage of prison spaces lies squarely on Nora Owen's desk," it said.
"It was this Rainbow Coalition and this Minister for Justice who, on coming into office, cancelled the prison building programme which had been given the go ahead by Bertie Ahern TD when he was Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fail led government."
Mr Ahern gave an interview to say that Mrs Owen had worked in an extremely pedestrian way" against crime until the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.
When the Progressive Democrats came to announce their own crime policy later in the afternoon, they would already have heard Mrs Owen get a good outing on the RTE lunchtime news sounding tough on crime. Their leader, Ms Mary Harney, accused Mrs Owen of a pathetic attempt at news management" by publicly commenting on opposition crime policies in advance of the PD crime press conference.
The party's justice spokeswoman, Ms Liz O'Donnell, responded to Mrs Owen's stricture about personalised abuse by calling on her to resign.
"This Minister for Justice has been responsible for a series of calamities and she is a source of embarrassment to her Government colleagues." She said Mrs Owen had failed to initiate an urgent programme of prison building. The Minister's programme had been "leisurely, to say the least".
"On that basis alone the Minister for Justice should resign," Ms O'Donnell said.
Mr Michael McDowell said any Government crime policies which had been successful had been initiated only as a result of pressure from opposition TDs in the Dail.
Mrs Owen said earlier that there was not an election campaign under way "but obviously the parties are getting themselves ready because we all know there will be an election this year".