Woman focus on crime and offer strong support for zero tolerance

CRIME featured prominently at the ardfheis women's conference, with strong support for Fianna Fail's policy of zero tolerance.

Party leader Mr Bertie Ahern told delegates it would lead to a major reduction in crime.

Delegates described graphically personal attacks and house burglaries. Ms Maria Kinsella, of the Sean Lemass cumann in Tallaght, Dublin, told how she was attacked with a syringe while visiting her parents' grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery. She was afraid to go back, she said.

"Nobody is standing up for me. No garda has come back to me and told me they were following up on this. What rights have the victims got? This Government, or any new government, should make the victim the priority."

Ms Kitty McMahon, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, lost £3,000 worth of household goods in a burglary. "I am demanding zero tolerance for the people of Ireland, and I would plead with Fianna Fall to take it on board in government."

Senator Ann Ormonde said the State should start working with young people at pre school level and involve parents. She called for a co ordinated approach between the Departments of Education, Justice and Health.

Mr Ahern said a Fianna Fail priority in government would be the drug problem. To protect young people from the drugs culture, the party "has set out a detailed, coherent plan to prevent them dropping out of school and to provide training, employment ... for those who leave school at the minimum age.

In many cities, he said, particularly inner city Dublin, parents had to rear the children of sons and daughters who were heroin addicts or victims of AIDS and HIV. The party was committed to ensuring that the victim's voice was heard, he added.

Rape victims should have rights when the offender is being prosecuted and tried. Women should not be excluded from decisions relating to the case. Fianna Fail would propose and pass a law guaranteeing the victims of rape and sexual assault their own legal representative, he said.

On the hepatitis C scandal, Mr Ahern accused the leaders of the Government parties of "callous dishonesty". Their claims of being somehow different and more transparent rang very hollow.

They had put politics above the rights of the victims to truth and justice and had thrown principle out the window to hide their own complicity in the offensive legal strategy mounted against the late Mrs McCole.

Mr Ahern said it was clear that the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste acquiesced in the legal strategy employed and the attempts to force the late Mrs McCole to go to the Compensation Tribunal rather than there having to be an admission of liability in the courts.

"If this Government continues to refuse to divulge in full the circumstances in which the legal strategy was devised, and to lay before the Oireachtas all documentation, including documentation from the Chief State Solicitor's ice, then it is my firm commitment that Fianna Fail in government will investigate.