Laws must change so punishment can reflect the severity of the crime

IS a three-year-old bundle of fun more important than a bag of mail?

It's a bit more than just a rhetorical question because obviously you wouldn't need to be a child psychologist to decide that a child is more important than getting something through your letterbox.

Under the law at the moment, though, a child psychologist would be on the wrong side of the argument, to judge from the outcome of two different cases in Cork District Court this week.

Gauging from the fines imposed, being able to get the ESB or Visa bill is 25 times more valuable than the welfare of a child.

In one of the cases, a mother was convicted on a charge of being drunk and in charge of a three-year-old child.

She was fined €2.

In the other case, a postman refused to deliver letters in a certain area because he was frightened of a dangerous dog that was on the loose.

The owner of the dog was fined €50 for failing to control the animal.

In the first case, the drunken mother was also fined 50 for being drunk and a source of danger to herself or others. Patently, her child was not included among the anonymous "others" she was a danger to. Being drunk and a danger to total strangers is more serious than posing the same danger to one of your own.

The woman in question had, according to garda evidence, collapsed on the side of the street and was completely under the influence. Her three-year-old child was in a buggy beside her.

The charge, on conviction, carried a maximum fine of €2, or one month in prison. Judge Uinsin MacGruairc opted for the former.

I was trying to figure out what relationship there might be between a fine and staying out of jail for a month. In other words, what level of fine would be appropriate to the alternative of escaping a month at the pleasure of the taxpayer?

In a general way, and without mentioning the particular case, I posed that question to two friends. One thought that to avoid a month in jail should warrant a fine of €10,000. The other, being a bit less punitive, said about €3,000.

There's a big difference between the two, obviously, but the point is that they considered the possibility of a month in jail reflected a serious offence. To avoid doing that time, they reckoned that the fine should reflect an offence which warranted a period in jail, and they weren't talking about littering the street or not paying your television licence.

Quite blatantly, a €2 fine does not equate with a month in jail, and, more importantly, any reasonable person would consider that it certainly does not fit the punishment for being drunk while in charge of a young child.

Even being patriotic in a pub at an ungodly hour of the morning is potentially more expensive. Consider the case of the ones found in a West Cork pub early on the morning of Ireland's opening World Cup match against Cameroon, who were each fined €65.

But a small fine or jail were the two extremes from which Judge MacGruairc had to choose, and it was his better judgment to impose the tiny fine.

Possibly although a postman might agree it would appear from the fines imposed in both cases that to be drunk in charge of a child is a lesser offence than failing to control a dog.

Although it was irrelevant to the fact that he was on the loose, the dog in question a cross between a sheepdog and an alsatian was said in evidence to be "old, half deaf and arthritic".

Even though the provision for a jail sentence in the first case would indicate that it is considered the more serious offence, it is highly unlikely that it would be handed down, unless the person was habitually drunk in charge of a child.

In the same court, a young man who was involved in disturbances in the city centre on two separate occasions was bound to the peace for a year. He was fined a total of €300 on three public order charges and he also got a one-month suspended prison sentence.

It's hardly a scientific test but, based on the latter case, staying out of jail for a month is worth between €100 and €300, and, presumably, most people would rather stay out of the clink, one former TD excepted.

The problem, of course, is that too much of our legislation is totally out of date and irrelevant to the times we are living in, and out of touch with the changed social conditions that have evolved since the time it was put on the statute books.

Antiquated laws are hampering the possibility of prosecutions flowing from the Flood Tribunal, despite the fact that so far it has cost well over €21 million.

After five years of investigating corruption in our planning system, and while embarrassing to the Government, the chances are that nobody will be hauled before any court on criminal charges.

Without any doubt, one of the most worrying, and appalling, crimes that concentrate peoples' minds, especially parents, are those involving paedophiles, sexual assaults and the abuse of children.

This was highlighted again this week, with reports that Fr Ivan Payne, a convicted paedophile, is due to be released from prison towards the end of next month, having only served four and a half years of a six-year sentence.

Naturally, his victims are outraged that he should be released early, and quite understandably so.

But he's not being "released early" according to the Prison Service, in what can only be described as stretching semantics with risible imagination.

No, he's been given standard remission of 25% off his sentence for good behaviour.

In fact, had he been given only his original sentence, the paedophile priest would have been out already.

For sexually assaulting small boys, the man was initially sentenced to two years, with four year suspended, in 1998.

It was only because of a successful appeal against that sentence by the Director of Public Prosecutions that it was increased to a six-year stretch.

And by any stretch of the imagination, even that longer sentence could not be said to be a punishment severe enough to fit the awful crimes he committed.

To add insult to injury, the priest is going to live near a community school for girls who are aged between 12 and 17 years old.

Obviously, little thought was put into that by the authorities who decided that the man was safe to release in the first place and poses no threat to the children attending the school or living in the vicinity.

Parents are very concerned that the priest who abused altar boys and sick children in hospital, will be free to move among the community.

He won't even be placed on a sex offenders register unless he fails to notify the gardaí of his address and any subsequent change of address.