Minister denies crisis claim on murder rate

There have been 21 murders in the State since the beginning of the year, but legal proceedings have started in only 11, according to the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue.

He denied suggestions by Mr Jim Higgins, Fine Gael's justice spokesman, that there was a crisis in Irish society with violence and said that Ireland had the fifth-lowest rate of murder in the EU.

The Minister said he accepted that there was particular concern about "gangland" killings, "even if some cases portrayed as such initially in this House or elsewhere may turn out to be nothing of the kind". He said he was putting the highest priority on targeting drug-trafficking and related criminal activity.

Mr Higgins said the 21 murders was a record number. "People have died in all types of circumstances. They have been kicked to death, beaten to death, stabbed to death and shot. There is domestic violence, street violence and gangland killings."

He called for a structured and scientific examination of the reasons so many people resorted to violence to get their way or to resolve disputes. "Rather than simply taking the punitive route we should take a more analytical approach to establish what can be done to curtail the current spiral of violence," he said.

Mr O'Donoghue said, however, that, in both 1998 and 1997, 38 murders were recorded and 34 were detected in each year. "The number of murders recorded over the past two years is lower than the numbers recorded in 1995 and 1996, which were 43 and 42 respectively."

The Minister also told the Dail that more than 2,500 untrained gardai are driving Garda cars. Mr O'Donoghue said that 4,667 gardai had successfully completed an official driving course.

A further 2,646 members "have the permission of their chief superintendent to drive official vehicles. These members do not drive official vehicles on a full-time basis". The permission only allowed them to drive official vehicles on a day-to-day basis in accordance with the needs of the service.

Mr Jim Higgins of Fine Gael said it was "grossly irresponsible that 2,646 members of the Garda are driving vehicles in the course of their duty without any training whatsoever. These gardai have just an ordinary driving licence".

He asked if the Minister was aware that there was a lot of disquiet among senior gardai and rank-and-file gardai that they were not being provided with adequate training. Mr O'Donoghue said: "I find it extraordinary that senior members of the Garda should have gone to Deputy Higgins in this regard. I have been Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform for almost three years and this matter was never raised with me."

Statistics released by the Minister showed that Nigerians made the most asylum applications to Ireland this year. They made 1,156 applications. The Romanians were the second highest number with 1,150, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 143, and Poland, with 99 applications.

The total number of asylum applications last year was 7,724 in 1999 compared to 3,848 up to the end of April this year. There were 4 ,626 applications in total in 1998 and 3,883 in 1997.

The Minister said there was no doubt that Ireland's take of asylum applications from Romania and Nigeria "appears disproportionately high compared to EU-member states".