MIDDLE class Ireland woke up this week to the knowledge that crime bosses cannot be contained within deprived city areas. A "contract killing" had been carried out on journalist, Veronica Guerin. And nobody felt safe.
The public reacted with fear and outrage to the murder. Angry voices on radio demanded the introduction of draconian measures to "put away" the suspected drugs barons for good. Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats responded with a Dail motion calling for a national emergency to be declared. And the Government floundered as it sought to respond to the wave of condemnation which broke over it.
Armfuls of flowers at the gates of Dail Eireann bore silent witness to the fact that politicians of all parties were being held responsible for the fracturing of the social contract.
And when the TDs recovered from their own shock and grief - for many of them had known Ms Guerin personally - they recognised their own vulnerability. Nora Owen flew back from a policing seminar in the United States into a hurricane of criticism.
Any Minister for Justice is an easy target at such a time. But Mrs Owen is particularly vulnerable. For the past 2 1/2 years she has been applying Band Aids to a justice system that requires major surgery. Outvoted and outmanoeuvred in Cabinet on issues of bail and funding for prisons, she has appeared to be in thrall to her civil servants and at odds with the Garda Siochana.
Most of her problems were inherited. And, in spite of unrelieved criticism, she has taken a number of important reforming initiatives.
Overall, however, the Minister has appeared tentative and conservative. A balancer of forces, rather than a committed reformer. A woman favouring incremental change, rather than bold, controversial innovation.
INNOVATION and the Department of Justice have never been easy bedfellows. Recognised as the most secretive and cautious branch of Government, the Department has swallowed the reforming ambitions of more ministers than it would like to remember. And Mrs Owen looks like being the latest victim.
Reforming the judicial system is like trying to pilot an oil tanker. It can take up to five miles for the vessel to stop. And momentum is difficult to achieve. What money was available over the past 20 years has been devoted largely to improving the pay and conditions of the judiciary, the Garda, prison officers and others. The infrastructure has suffered. And the prison system has operated in continuous crisis.
Blaming others for the mess has become a game of pass the parcel at Leinster House. One last month, Dermot Ahern accused Mrs Owen of not being fit for office because of reduced Government spending on justice and crime. But the last official figures used to justify this maim ended in 1994 and had been spent by Maire Geoghegan Quinn.
In spite of such political point scoring, there is no denying the neglect and the lack of follow through on official policy. This time last year, the Minister announced the appointment of a Garda supremo to co ordinate the fight against the drug barons.
What the public wasn't told was that the same deputy Garda commissioner remained responsible for all other major crime in the State. At the same time, the much vaunted Task Force on Drugs is said to be bedevilled by suspicion and personality clashes between the Garda and the Revenue Commissioners.
The Minister is responsible to the Dail. But she can hardly be blamed for the litany of operational weaknesses evident in the Garda's response to the drugs threat. There have been 11 fatal "hits" on Dublin criminals over a two year period.
The public shrugged and nobody was charged. It was only when the criminal confraternity reached outside its bailiwick to kill a troublesome journalist that people realised the dangers in the situation.
THE Garda, riven by internal trade union disputes and suffering from a lack of discipline and morale, responded in traditional fashion. They knew all about the criminals but hadn't the powers necessary to put them away. Demands for strong and more severe legislative measures have always disguised operational failures.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, unwilling to relinquish control of the disgraceful and ineffectual prisons system, a decade ago by the Whitaker Report, squats impotently in its bureaucratic bunker.
Tony Gregory has been a long term critic of the political and judicial system for its failure to help inner city communities respond to the drugs threat. The courage of the Independent TD in identifying and condemning the major drug pushers has been equally noteworthy.
Measures now being proposed may be too late, he says, because some drug suppliers have already moved, along with their assets, out of the country.
The sequestration of criminal assets is one of the measures now being contemplated by the Government. But, before such assets can be frozen, according to regulations, proof of illegal activity must be produced.
Fianna Fail has gone one better. It has introduced a Bill proposing that suspected assets be frozen for up to seven years without such evidence. The onus of proof would only fall on the State when the seizure of such assets was contemplated.
Politicians talk about changing the bail laws of limiting the right to silence of minimum prison sentences for firearms and drug offences and of controlling the "abuse" of temporary release from prison. These are all worthy objectives. But they ignore the fact that our prisons system is already grossly overcrowded.
Even with the extra 278 prison places planned by Mrs Owen before the middle of next year, the gap between cell requirement and availability will not be bridged. There has been a direct link between the number of people unemployed and the size of the jail population. Between the 1960s and the 1990s the numbers out of work increased almost sixfold. The prison population moved in precise parallel.
In the 1980s, after years of neglect, the first phase of a new prison was built, at Wheatfield, in Dublin. Everything else was a case of renovation and make do.
As of now, a 20 acre prison site, surrounded by a seven metre high wall, is growing only grass at Wheatfield. It was to have held phase two of a new jail. Similar urban sites are owned by the State near existing prisons at Cork and Portlaoise. And, in the sparsely populated west of Ireland, a wall encircled, former mental hospital at Castlerea is a monument to Fianna Fail's political folly.
Law and order has to be proud for. Those who wail and beat their breasts over the size of the Government's spending bill will have to bite the bullet. And the parties in Government will have to spell the message out in clear and unequivocal terms. Law and order costs. And the buck stops with the taxpayer.
There are no magic legislative wands to be waved. And no instant formulae. The drugs menace can only be counteracted over time by an improved education and information system by pumping jobs into deprived areas by giving young people a sense of self worth and by encouraging the communities to liaise directly with the local police.
Community policing, in all its manifestations, is the most important way forward. But its implementation needs administrative change. The most basic of these would require members of the Garda to live in the areas where they work.
The Minister for Justice has regionalised the Garda system and regards it as the first really significant reform since the foundation of the force. But there is not much point in a system where assistant commissioners have a day job in the country, before returning home to their families in Dublin.
All members of the Garda should live locally and be part of the community. After that fairly minor reform, the force might be in a position to consider the vexed issue of double jobbing.
Special Dail debates are important signals of political concern, designed to reassure the community. And draconian legislation, which could diminish the quality of life for everyone, may yet have to be considered. But cool heads are required at this time. The menace of the drugs culture will not be defeated easily or within a few months.