Whereas most anti-crime initiatives by successive governments have been knee-jerk responses to rising crime levels, the package of measures announced yesterday by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, comes at a time when official statistics show that the rate of reported crime is actually declining. In the recent past, public concern about crime has lessened as the crime level has stabilised and then fallen. The sense of public anguish, so evident in the aftermath of Veronica Guerin's murder over three years ago, has largely subsided.
Mr O'Donoghue, along with his predecessor, Ms Nora Owen, is entitled to some credit for this; the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau and the concerted drive against serious crime have reaped considerable dividends. The Minister will, no doubt, see the package of legislative proposals unveiled yesterday as the second prong of his assault on crime. The Government says that the new proposals give the Garda no more than is commonplace in the criminal law of most Western states. These include; a power to detain suspects for some serious crimes for up to 48 hours; a limitation of the suspect's right to silence and the classification of saliva as a non-intimate sample, which could be used in DNA testing. Mr O'Donoghue says that the new Bill gives the Garda "the basic tools to investigate serious crime".
For all that, these are, in the Irish context, radical measures which have not in the past been applied to the investigation of so called `ordinary' crime. There are reasons to be cautious. The Garda's record in relation to the care of suspects in their care is not an unblemished one. The installation of video recording equipment at 200 Garda stations will help to reassure - but it provides no guarantees.
A key question, in assessing the new measures is whether the new package will make a real difference to the Garda in the investigation of serious crime. While the overall levels of recorded crime may have dropped in recent years, some of the most serious categories of crime rarely seem to yield up their culprits to the Garda's investigations. There have been few arrests, let alone convictions, in relation to the murders of many young and vulnerable women at a variety of locations throughout this State. Little progress has been reported into most of the gangland murders which have claimed almost a dozen lives in two years.
Would the new Bill make a difference? Could it yield results which are not possible under existing legislation? It would be good to hear the Garda Commissioner, Mr Byrne, tell us whether the murderers or abductors of Jo Jo Dullard, Fiona Pender, Raonaid Murray and others would now be in custody if the gardai had the powers which are now sought in Mr O'Donogue's Bill. For its part, the Government should proceed with with caution.