Madam, - Yet again the Dáil distinguished itself on Tuesday with a childishly cacophonous row that passed for a debate on criminal justice. The Government was in the dock because one trial collapsed, for now at least.
There was a striking poverty of ideas on the Left. The Labour Party leader was demanding "post-Omagh type legislation" and "action" while his spokesperson on justice chanted a few clichés about "pendulums swinging in favour of the accused".
The Taoiseach lapsed into guttersnipe mode with incoherent references to "the do-gooder society" and there was lots of noise. For a brief moment, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform seemed measured in tone while Enda Kenny brought a whole new dimension to the art of parliamentary passive aggression.
Has it not struck our law-makers that the repressive legislation introduced in the aftermath of Veronica Guerin's murder simply has not worked? To add to that edifice of symptom-focused laws may look like action but will achieve little.
There are real questions about Garda capacity that include but go deeper than mere resources. There are profoundly entrenched structural reasons for the existence of crime in its "organised" and disorganised manifestations. The choice is not one between rights (for robbers) or resources (for cops), as some would have us believe.
Facing up to these issues is a lot less amenable to soundbites and does not yield an immediate advantage in opinion polls.
When will we learn that hasty, superficial and opportunistic reactions on foot of manufactured moral panics (for which the media must accept some responsibility) are as much a symptom of the deeper problem as crime itself? When will those who are chosen by the people to be the Opposition (and there must be a lesson in that) start doing their job by providing public policy alternatives? Ireland is, in effect, becoming a one-party state where all the parties have different names. - Yours etc.,
DONNCHA O'CONNELL,
Faculty of Law,
NUI,
Galway.
Madam, - Two statements from the Minister for Justice, reported on your front page of November 5th, reflect the confused thinking of this Government. Referring to the collapse of the murder trial in the Central Criminal Court last Monday, Mr McDowell made the point that while the events were unprecedented, it would be disproportionate because of difficulties in one particular case, to suggest that the system had suddenly collapsed and that the Constitutional and legal basis of the criminal justice system had been discredited.
The second statement by Mr McDowell was that he was considering a change in the law to allow a witness statement given to police in advance of a trial to be considered by a jury, even when the witness refused to stand over the statement during the trial itself.
What a contradiction! Perhaps a change of Minister, rather than a change in the law, might be more appropriate. - Yours, etc.,
TOM COOPER,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.