McDowell cracks same old whip

IN VIEW of the recent surge in violent crime, Justice Minister Michael McDowell has announced new legislation which he claims is “a comprehensive programme of measures” against “those who have showed a callous disregard for the rule of law”.

He outlined plans for lengthened periods of detention, a DNA database and specific provisions against gangs and organised crime which, we are told, will become law by Easter.

As with many ‘new’ and ‘unprecedented’ legislative measures announced by the Government, the proposals are reheated versions of old promises, and the bombastic press releases which accompany them have been reworded accordingly.

In July 2004, McDowell published a Criminal Justice Bill which he said was “a comprehensive package of anti-crime measures”.

It aimed to lengthen detention periods, create a DNA database and deal with gangland activity.

Sound familiar?

Incredibly, it took two full years for the bill to pass through the Oireachtas — and yet McDowell is promising that his latest proposals will be passed within two months.

The resurrection of the DNA database — “an invaluable tool in the investigation of crime”, according to the minister — is particularly interesting.

It was jettisoned from the 2004 bill to allow time for the Law Reform Commission to report on the issue. The commission reported in November 2005, yet proposals have only been brought to cabinet this week. If the minister considered DNA profiling so invaluable, why was the commission’s report allowed to gather dust for over a year?

The minister’s proposals also address the right to silence, an issue which is being studied by the Criminal Law Review Group established by the minister last October.

Their review is to be presented to him by March 1, but by announcing his own plans before hearing their conclusions he has pulled the rug out from under the group and condemned its proposals to irrelevance.

In November 2004, McDowell described gangland activity in Ireland as a “dying wasp“, yet this week he described it as “one of the greatest threats to our society since the advent of paramilitarism in the 1970s”.

The tragedy is that it took 49 gangland murders in the interim to bring about this change in attitude.

The depressing fact is that the Government has lost the fight against violent crime — in spite of all the tough talk, hyped proposals and recycled press releases.

This latest announcement has a lot more to do with saving some modicum of credibility for McDowell as he faces a general election than it has to do with tackling the violent crime epidemic.

Barry Walsh

96 Brooklawn

Clontarf

Dublin 3