The first and most appropriate response to the recent murders in Kildare, Kerry and Galway, must be to express sympathy to the relatives and friends of the deceased. Long after the media spotlight has left, the individual families will still be struggling to come to terms with their bereavement. Like the rest of us, they will find it difficult to comprehend the random, callous nature of the killings.
The discovery of three bodies in the space of 24 hours has sent a collective shiver down the spine of the community. Coming so soon after the murder of Marilyn Rynn and the still unexplained disappearance of Josephine Dollard, there is a palpable sense of fear and outrage in the community.
The circumstances of each murder could hardly be more chilling; an elderly man found in a pool of blood in his farmhouse in Galway; a 69 year old farmer is murdered in Kerry and a mother of three is abducted and stabbed in Kildare. There is a sense of disbelief about what is taking place in our society: the familiar settled pattern of rural life, in particular, is being violated by the kind of brutal force more commonly associated with the streets of an American ghetto. The comfortable rhythm of everyday Irish life has been sundered, as perhaps never before. There is a strong sense throughout the community that the level of crime is spiralling out of control.
The feeling of anger might more easily be assuaged if there was any confidence in the community that the Government was giving the crime issue the kind of priority that it demands. Instead, there is a sense that the Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, is fumbling around in the darkness with no clear policy guidelines on crime and punishment and few ideas about how the Garda's disappointing detection rate for recent murders might be improved.
In the Dail yesterday, Ms Owen appeared to place all her faith on the new regionalised Garda structure, but there is little to suggest that the Garda will be able to combat crime more effectively simply because their national structures have been redefined. Ms Owen might more usefully address more urgent questions: Does the Murder Squad need to be reactivated? Should the Castlerea prison project proceed? Is there a case for a referendum on the bail laws?
As this newspaper has pointed out on several occasions, Ms Owen also has a responsibility to take the wider view. To his credit, the Garda Commissioner, Mr Culligan, has sought to stimulate a public debate on the role and function of the force and he clearly wants to identify the priorities and objectives of our hugely expensive criminal justice system. Fianna Fail has responded, in part, by calling for the publication of a white paper on crime. But the Government's response does not appear to go much beyond easy public relations gestures like tax breaks for burglar alarms. Ms Owen, it is true, inherited most of these ills but so far she has done little but stumble from one crisis to another, giving the distinct sense of trying to make up answers as she goes along. The deputy general secretary of the Gardai Representative Association, Mr P.J. Stone, perhaps went too far, given his official role. But he voiced what a great many of the public are now asking themselves. Is the Minister up to it? And does the Government care?