The apparent progress in the Garda's investigations into serious crime in Dublin prompts many to ask what work was done before the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.
It is a simplistic, if understandable, response to reports of raids arrests the apparent garnering of significant intelligence and, indeed, of inquiries into possible links between gardai and criminals. This activity is a long way from securing convictions, much less, getting to the big players in the criminal scene. But the Garda believes it will get these results in time.
Some of the present activity can certainly be attributed to the appointment of a new Commissioner with an abundance of energy and a resolution to get things done. But there can hardly be any doubt that the principal factor in the drive against organised crime is a new found political will to engage with the problem and to prioritise police resources in order to do so.
There are few tasks that lie beyond the capacity of a modern, well equipped, police organisation, given a clear brief and reasonable resources. Garda wheels may grind slow but they grind exceedingly small. The force will bring this resent series of inquiries as far as is humanly possible, consistent with the law of the land.
But what will happen then? If experience teaches us anything in this area it is that the elimination of one criminal power merely makes way for a successor and often a more ruthless one. Criminal activity is more often displaced than eliminated. If things take their normal course, this series of investigations will continue as long as the political will is there to sustain the process. The Government will go the country next year and declare that it has scored a victory over organised crime. And gradually, in spite of the best will of those who lead the Garda Siochana, things will revert to where they were. Until the next crisis.
It would be churlish to deny the vigour with which the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, has moved forward with her package of anti crime measures. But the State's approach on criminal justice issues is still reactive and geared to that which is immediate, visible and tangible. The problem with crime in any society is that so much of it and particularly the sophisticated, successful element of it is invisible and intangible.
Nora Owen has perhaps as much as a year left in her tenure at the Department of Justice. She still has time to put in place the sort of measures which might allow us to get ahead of the crime issue, to place it in its proper context and to devise long term policies and strategies to tackle it. Virtually everything that has been done up to now is fire fighting.