The Minister for Justice is strictly correct numerically when she insists that the murder rate has not increased steeply and that the rates of detection are still high. Ireland's incidence of homicide remains one of the lowest in the world and the Garda still manages to clear up the great majority of cases. But what the Minister's reassurances conceal is the existence of a rising and frightening phenomenon of professional killing in respect of which the Garda detection rate is zero. Upwards of a dozen people have been shot to death in as many months, for the most part in Dublin. And for the most part those who have died have been individuals directly involved in crime of associated with its murky fringes. A graphic picture of the situation was set out by this newspaper's Crime and Drugs Correspondent on Saturday last.
Few among the law abiding community are likely to mourn the passing of such individuals. Case hardened gardaf will observe that this is what happens when thieves fall out. Some media commentators will even commend the process of mutual elimination among the criminal classes. Nobody in the Oireachtas appears to be unduly concerned or to understand the implications of what is happening. But the stark reality is that the writ of the State has ceased to run in respect of certain groupings of individuals and in respect of certain activities. The rule of the gun rather than the rule of law now prevails for these. The men who run the Garda Siochana will not be permitted to say it in public; but the national police service is virtually powerless to respond. People who are willing to employ deadly force can do so, and provided that they take what are by now well rehearsed precautions, they will get away with it.
Gangland assassinations are part of the criminal pattern of most urbanised societies. But it is doubtful if another jurisdiction could be found where the official response is so palpably inadequate; where the senior officers of the police and the prosecution services have asked for reform and have been ignored; where most of the law makers do not even feel constrained to express concern about this most serious undermining of public order. As long as the problem is confined to the bleak suburbs and the concrete wastelands it can be forgotten about. While the victims are the young men whose life circumstances have predestined them to a life of crime, it can be ignored. But of course it will not remain so. If violence, death, or the fear of death, can eliminate a rival or clear a district for exploitation, the same instruments can be used elsewhere where the pickings are better and life is more congenial.
Those who kill for gain will grow emboldened. The ramming of a Garda van and the snatching of a prisoner at gunpoint at Newlands Cross on Thursday are indicative. The Minister for Justice, in fairness, is advancing a series of measures to give the gardai some additional powers and she is supporting some structural changes and improvements within the force. She has put in train a modest programme of prison expansion and she is pushing forward with much needed streamlining of the courts. But it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the core of ruthless, professional criminality in our society remains impregnable and is growing in strength and scale.