For a party trying to woo young voters, the welcome Sinn Féin’s leader received on Dublin’s O’Connell St was almost too good to believe.

GERRY ADAMS’ restatement of Sinn Féin policy earlier this week, that his party would close the Special Criminal Court, seemed, at the time, predictably self-serving and ill-judged.

As expected, the brutal murder of Dublin taxi-driver and sometime criminal Eddie Hutch at his Ballybough home on Monday brought law and order on to centre stage of this general election campaign, writes Daniel McConnell

Sinn Féin’s election spending proposals have been overshadowed by claims it wants to repeal anti-gangland laws and overhaul Dáil elections to put its “cronies” in power.

SINN FÉIN would have preferred not to have to highlight their ill-judged and self-serving campaign to abolish the Special Criminal Court (SCC) just as tit-for-tat gangland murders claimed two victims in Dublin, once again underlining how essential such an option is in our justice system.

Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil, has described as “extraordinary” the calls from Gerry Adams for witness protection schemes for jurors to replace the Special Criminal Court.

Gerry Adams has failed to detail the measures that would be put in place to protect jurors and witnesses if the Special Criminal Court is abolished.

Like a war bride waving her husband off to battle, Tánaiste Joan Burton waved Enda Kenny off from the steps of Government Buildings yesterday.

From the high of the marriage referendum to domestic and foreign threats, and more Garda controversies, it’s been an extraordinary year for justice and law, writes Cormac O’Keeffe

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has refused to withdraw his support for former Provisional IRA leader, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, who was yesterday convicted of tax evasion.

The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is to supply an updated analysis of republican criminal activity to the high-level Garda assessment on the status of the Provisional IRA.

GOOD lawyers don’t look for popularity in the cases they take but even Kevin Feeney must have wondered how he got landed with one particular brief which looked like it could only put him in a lose-lose situation.

The trial of prominent republican Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, on charges connected with alleged revenue offences, looks set to begin in May, the Special Criminal Court heard today.

A well-known senior republican is due in court in Co Louth this morning after being arrested yesterday by gardaí attached to the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

THE Assets Recovery Agency investigating IRA money laundering yesterday froze assets worth £11.8 million (€17.9m) in Manchester, but representatives of the men involved said they were optimistic of successfully fighting the decision in the courts.

A BUSINESSMAN whose home and offices were raided by police in connection with an investigation into an IRA crime empire admitted links with the family of an alleged IRA godfather yesterday.

ABOUT 250 properties associated with two Manchester-based businessmen were yesterday being investigated by Assets Recovery Agency officials in the North as part of a probe into IRA links.