The package announced yesterday by the Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, is about the least she could do to keep the pressure of public opinion off her back. And it may not be sufficient even to do that. It differs little from what many of her predecessors have advanced, after one crisis or another, over the past 15 years or so. There are the familiar ingredients additional prison places to help lock up the criminals and changes in Garda structures. We have also had some curious television images of a helicopter over a field in Galway and a garda marksman behind a bush with a gun.
There is, of course, a longer, more measured vie# to be taken. The plea by the Garda Commissioner, Mr Culligan, for elected representatives and the community at large to deliberate on the force's priorities continues to fall on deaf ears, although that is not solely the Minister's failing. Instead, Ms Owen has repeated her commitment to regionalisation of the force. But is there any real evidence to suggest that the Garda will be able to combat crime more effectively simply because the Commissioner's office has been regionalised? Mr Culligan, for one, appears to be of the view that something rather more substantial is required.
On the prisons, Ms Owen administers a temporary palliative additional places are to be found in Portlaoise, the Curragh and elsewhere. But there is no inkling that she appreciates the urgent need for fundamental reform of the management and administration of the prison service along the lines recommended by the Whitaker Report a decade ago.
Ms Owen is tentative in her response to the bail question. The Irish criminal justice system has unquestionably the most liberal bail regime in Europe. Every policeman and policewoman, and very many victims of crime, know full well how the bail laws are exploited by criminals and used to cock a snook at the criminal justice system. Ms Owen sidestepped the bail question yesterday and sought refuge in the ongoing examination of the issue by the Law Reform Commission. But the public is entitled to know if she together with her colleagues in Government favour a referendum on bail.
It is difficult not to feel some sympathy for the Minister. She is reaping the whirlwind of her predecessors' neglect and shortsightedness. And it also clear that she has something less than the wholehearted support of all of her Cabinet colleagues. She has also been somewhat unlucky, finding herself in some degree at the mercy of events in the Department of Justice. After a series of security blunders, including the Lansdowne Road riot and the £2.8 million Brinks Allied robbery last year, she was already a convenient target for the opposition and the public even before the recent spate of murders.
That said, the Minister's statement that a multifaceted approach is required is a welcome acknowledgment that we must, as a society, move beyond an exclusively law and order approach. A great deal of the criminal evil which we now face in this society derives from a failure of traditional methods of social control and their non replacement in a more modern, urbanised society. Government departments have an important role to play notably the Departments of Health and Education. But where is the evidence that other ministers are listening to Ms Owen's call for a wider response, not just from the community, but from "all agencies of the State"?