This Government may be showing sharp divisions on some issues - say, where a local hospital, aka major vote-gathering device, might be threatened - but in others, there are signs of a startling consensus, writes Kathy Sheridan.
Last week, amid the furore about collapsed trials and two fingers to the people, the Taoiseach had his answer ready for the misguided folk inclined to give the two fingers to the dearth of Garda resources.
The real problem, it seems, is that the Garda is being kept on some kind of leash. And whose fault is that? The "do-gooders". The "weak- kneed". "If we're serious, we have to let them at it," pronounced the Taoiseach of the day, without explaining precisely what he meant by "at it".
No doubt the McBrearty family could enlighten us.
A few weeks ago, Willie O'Dea, junior Minister at the Department of Justice, also had a lash at the breed, or what he styled as "the do- gooder vigilantes". This was in the context of the reception accorded to his announcement that he had "signed into force in recent weeks" a provision in the Children's Act which had actually been signed off by John O'Donoghue 16 months before.
As we now know, his announcement and accompanying spiels related to a 100-year-old provision empowering judges to order compensation from wilfully negligent parents.
A more pressing objection to his stunt, however, is the fact that other, genuinely innovative, provisions in the same Act - ones with the most potential to break the cycle of offending - remain unsigned.
Over and over, people in the area of juvenile justice insist that there is no government support and no ideological commitment to the Act, which was 10 years in the making. When it finally appeared in 2001, there was talk of full implementation by 2006. You can amend that now to 2009 or thereabouts.
Two years since it was passed by the Oireachtas, only about 10-15 per cent of it has been signed into law, estimates Dr Ursula Kilkelly of UCC.
Criminologist Dr Paul O'Mahony points the finger at the media for putting pressure on politicians, "through their moral panic machinery" to get quick-fix responses, such as investing "countless millions" in new prisons for teenagers and threatening to close the open prisons, the only rehabilitative parts of the system, as a way of pulling the Prison Officers' Association into line.
But what does that say about the calibre of our politicians? Can they really be so craven in a matter which, they themselves insist, has the potential to threaten the core of our democracy? Can they really be so reckless about their bounden duty to protect an Act of the Oireachtas from the quick-fix merchants and the vote-getting stunt-artists. The chickens are coming home to roost, not least in Mr O'Dea's own territory. Let us ignore for now, Garda Paul Brown's contention that there are days in Limerick city when there are no gardaí to go out on the beat. Or the Garda Commissioner's insistence that he does not have the resources to sit on known criminals.
Is it not interesting that Limerick city's unemployment rate is the second highest in the country (after Donegal)?
Or that in the view of former crime reporter and author of a book on the city's feuding gangs, Anthony Galvin - who hardly sees himself as a "do-gooder vigilante" - social exclusion is the main reason for Limerick's increasing crime problem?
Or that Independent Limerick city councillor, John Gilligan, who lives in St Mary's Park, one of the city's most deprived areas, and who hardly views himself as a "do-gooder vigilante" either, sees "a direct correlation between social deprivation and crime".
Unlike so many leaping on the podium in recent days, Gilligan sees no single or simple solutions to the situation. "It took years for it to get this way and it will take years to put it right." He wants more money for early education and for innovative employment schemes. He wants to see young people who use recreational drugs - and thus support violent organised crime - being challenged.
On King's Island, home to many of the young players in this bloody mess, the youth and community centre may have to close due to a lack of funding, leaving 100 teenagers without a youth club and 30 local children without a creche.
The folly of the quick-fix merchants resonates in the words of Catherine Kelly, director of Limerick Youth Services. "It costs up to €200,000 to keep someone in jail for a year. We could run a very good project for up to 60 [chilren] with that kind of money". Imagine what she could do with the €65 million allocated to Horse Racing Ireland in the 2003 Budget.
"Do-gooder" means to do good. Why, do you think, has it become a dirty word in the mouths of Government Ministers?