People found guilty of murder involving aggravating factors such as use of firearms or gangland involvement should serve sentences of at least 15 to 20 years, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said yesterday.
Speaking at the launch of the Parole Board's annual report, Mr McDowell said he wanted to send out a message "loud and clear" that respect for human life must be a cornerstone of our society.
"When a person commits a murder, often in cold-blooded fashion, he or she must be in no doubt of the consequences. He or she will serve a long prison sentence following conviction for such a heinous and despicable crime," he said.
He said he wished to dispel the notion that life sentence prisoners were being released after seven years.
While these prisoners were eligible to have their cases reviewed by the Parole Board after that period of time, the average period served by life sentence prisoners released over the last decade was 13½ years.
In the absence of aggravating factors and where guilt has been admitted and remorse shown, no one facing a life sentence for murder should expect to be released on licence before serving 12 to 14 years, Mr McDowell said. Longer sentences of 15 to 20 years should be served in cases involving aggravating factors. Sentences in excess of this should be served where the perpetrator remained an "obvious risk" to the safety of others.
Gordon Holmes, chairman of the Parole Board, which makes recommendations to the Minister on the length of sentence for prisoners serving terms in excess of eight years, said the rise in gangland murders in Dublin was comparable to Chicago in the 1920s.
He said: "What's happening in this country is terribly worrying. Dublin and, to a large degree the other cities, are becoming like Chicago in the 20s and 30s. The drugs scenario in Dublin is that it leads automatically to execution-type killings."
As a result, he said, it was important to stress that the days of prisoners expecting to be released after serving 10 or 12 years in prison were over.
"The sentence they serve must be a long and salutary one. The board must do everything it can to promote public confidence and to ensure its attitude to the dreadful crime of murder will remain constant. The position of human life in society must be restored," he said.
Labour's justice spokesman Joe Costello, however, said the detection of crime was equally as important as the length of sentence, yet the Minister had failed to deliver adequate Garda resources.
"There is no prison and no parole without detection. We see now where the detection rate for murder has fallen to just 16 per cent, for example. That needs Garda resources and until the Minister delivers on that, criminals will continue to commit the most serious of crimes with apparent impunity," he said.
In relation to the Parole Board's annual report for 2005, Mr Holmes pointed out that remission on sentences in Ireland was about 25 per cent, compared with about 50 per cent in England and Wales.
Mr Holmes also said more resources needed to be made available to support services for the reintegration of prisoners into the community. He said such services were too few and almost exclusively based in Dublin.
A better-resourced system would give the board more options in considering and making recommendations in cases of long-term and life sentence prisoners.