Mick Clifford: Build more prisons? Give it a break, Leo

Leo Varadkar's call in the wake of the Ashling Murphy case to build more prisons is a deflection from his government's failure to act on giving judges more sentencing powers

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar: 'If people want dangerous people locked up for a long time, we're going to need more room in our prisons.'

Sometimes the oldest gags are the best. Whenever Fine Gael is in trouble, it turns to a favourite tool of deflection: law and order. So it was at the party conference in Co Kildare at the weekend.

Leo Varadkar was asked about the comments of Judge Tony Hunt last week, during the sentencing hearing for Jozef Puska, the man convicted of murdering Ashling Murphy.