If the deepening ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system were to be capable of remedy by appointing a Garda Commissioner from outside the force, that is a step which the Government ought to take without hesitation. But everyone knows that the Garda Siochana is only one component in a complex system which is deeply enmired.
Indeed, the Garda is by no means the most in effective element in it. And Patrick Culligan, has been an excellent commissioner. To imply that this commissionership has been deficient in some way which must be made good by a civilian succession, is to do a grave injustice to a man of capacity and vision who has not hesitated to define his own ground or to speak out as necessary.
The Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, has gone with vigour at the problems which surround her. She has fought for prison spaces. She has put a new command structure in place for the Garda. She has accepted the thrust of Mrs Justice Denham's report on the courts. She has advanced legislation on problems from drugs to the Garda representative feud. It would be unfair to say she has not done her best.
But with the possible exception of the reforms planned for the courts, she is applying surface remedies. The truth is that even if she were of a mind to seek fundamental change, the chances of achieving consensus among her multi party Cabinet colleagues would be remote. There is no agreed view of how the criminal justice system ought to develop, of how the penal system ought to function, of how the Garda ought to relate to Government. There is no view on these matters because there has been no thinking on them, beyond the superficial, across all party lines.
The politicians decry the bloody mindedness of the rank and file Garda associations. They nod when the prisons are described as hellholes. They issue the statutory statements when another haul of drugs is intercepted. But without exception, each party has lacked the moral courage to essay fundamental reforms for fear of diluting Leinster House's own powers and patronage and because there are no votes in it.
Is it to be wondered at that the gardai are resentful when they believe their careers to be the pawns and prizes of the politicians? Is it to be wondered at that the prisons are in crisis when no Government has the courage to take the only decision that ought to be taken about Mountjoy to build anew and knock the existing cesspit to oblivion? Is it to be wondered at that the country is awash with drugs when a politically convenient fudge split enforcement responsibilities between the gardai, the naval service, and customs officers, redeployed through the 1992 Single Market?
Talk of appointing a civilian Commissioner falls into the same vacuous category of being seen to do something while ensuring that everything stays the same. Ministers and Commissioners will come and go and the criminal justice system will worsen to the point where today's conditions will be looked back upon as an age that was near idyllic.