TDs jostle for pole position on ideas for fighting crime

WHILE the official go ahead is not expected until Thursday, the election race has already resulted in a pileup at the first corner - thanks to the speed merchants of Fianna Fail.

The party's justice spokesman John O'Donoghue has been revving up on the grid in the party's zero tolerance car for some time, but before you could say "here comes Eddie Irvine in the second Ferrari", his colleague Willie O'Dea came screaming up the inside yesterday, with a proposal that criminals be made to wear placards proclaiming their shame.

Meanwhile, driving the spare car, Tipperary TD Noel Davern also got in on the act, urging that illegal street traders be removed from the streets and "suitably punished" as part of the zero tolerance policy. "This would in turn eliminate the need to supply, hence criminals would have no market," he argued.

Mr O'Dea, who promised mode details after Thursday, told RTE's Pat Kenny that "variants" of the us placards of shame proposal might be more appropriate to Ireland, but if he was stuck for variants, Mr Kenny helpfully suggested several, including chain gangs, painted foreheads and a nightly TV feature on the convicts of the day.

Representing the Government, which may be adopting a one stop strategy to judge by is a slowish start on the issue, Labour's Joe Costello cautioned against a return to "medieval" punishments, unwisely, he mentioned stoning as one of the discredited: at the rate things are going, this could be one of the variants being debated by the end of the week.

The Labour man seemed to concede that public humiliation might work for businessmen convicted of fraud or farmers caught using angel dust, but none of the participants addressed a glaring fact: that it doesn't seem to work with politicians. TDs who lose their seats may suffer temporary feelings of shame, but the high rate of recidivism - typically involving a spell in the Seanad, followed by a full scale return to representative politics - suggests there is no long term deterrent.

While crime is making all the early running in the still phoney war, a row between Democratic Left and Fianna Fail yesterday signalled the start of real electoral business. Bertie Ahern's support for a minimum wage had an outraged DL - whose clothes he was borrowing - pointing to past statements in which he opposed the measure.