Irish Examiner View: Light-touch penalties sell public short
The damage caused to the former Gaelscoil Ui Riordain building in Coolroe in Ballincollig in a suspected arson attack.
The trio of balaclava-clad vandals who used petrol bombs to damage the former Ballincollig gaelscoil that was being refurbished to accommodate refugees from Ukraine should face the full force of the law, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said.
So should those landlords who ask tenants for sex instead of rent, Mr Martin replied to a separate question. Those who engage in such behaviour have no place in Irish society, he added.
And, no doubt, anyone who is asked will demand vigorous and rigorous application of the legal penalties against those who are found guilty of attacking a 57-year-old tourist from New York, who was seriously beaten and suffered life-changing injuries off Talbot St in Dublin’s north inner city.
Three very different forms of crime, although all of them cowardly in one way or another. And all of them offering an opportunity for politicians to show populist firmness on law and order. But it may be that members of the public take some convincing that words will be met with action.
There are four components to a justice system which commands support.
Firstly, that there are sufficient resources to police society’s rules effectively and visibly, and to place a doubt in the minds of would-be villains that there is a risk to their wrongdoings.
Secondly, there is a demonstrable commitment to detection, pursuit, and punishment of perpetrators.
Thirdly, that punishment provides both deterrent and sufficient encouragement not to re-offend.
Fourthly, structures are in place which permit rehabilitation of offenders and provide an opportunity to reform and undertake a meaningful role in society.
By any existing yardstick, our current approach fails on each of these four criteria. There are too few gardaí; crime detection rates in many categories fall well below 50%; convictions vary wildly by type; three in every five people released from prison reoffend within three years, a percentage which increases for those aged under 21.
In terms of sentencing, while tariffs have been increased for mandatory life sentences, we should anticipate that terms for other crimes may lag behind what the general public expects, even if there is an understanding that approximately 70% of people in prison have mental health or drug or alcohol problems.
More than half of the 4,000 inmates in Irish jails are serving sentences of less than 12 months.
In those headline cases which stir general anger — arson, sexual offences, and criminal physical attacks on innocent people, for example — citizens will be watching, not only to see if arrests are made, but to gauge that appropriate punishment is provided.
The concept of a sentence “pour encourager les autres” belongs to previous centuries, but our political leaders may find that when they cite “the full rigours of the law”, that these match the expectations of the voters.
During the hundreds of protests over the past 15 months on differing proposals to house Ukrainian refugees, there has been an ubiquitous refrain from protestors and local residents. Part of their opposition, they said, is stimulated by lack of information. That view has found sympathy on occasion.
Yet we can see the consequences of placing an early heads-up into the public domain, with the attempts to set fires at the former Gaelscoil Uí Ríordáin building in Ballincollig, where refurbishment is under way to provide refuge for 94 people.
The premises have been empty for nearly a decade. Despite a purchase seven years ago by a development firm and plans for apartments, these were overtaken by inflation.
An agreement was reached with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth in February to provide 14 self-contained self-catering units, with the department paying a daily rate of €47.50 per resident.
It took advantage of new planning regulations relating to the conversion of hotels, hostels, convents, monasteries, and Defence Forces barracks to refugee accommodation and to reception and orientation centres for international protection applicants.
So far, so full disclosure, but in the era of anti-social networks it can only take one posting on encrypted apps such as Telegram to mobilise a small number of bad actors who can attempt to derail a worthwhile and sensible project to provide temporary relief.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin is correct when he says “we should always play to our better spirits in Ireland and be true to our values in our country”.
It may be challenging for us, but 4,000 miles away Ukrainian soldiers are driving towards Crimea in what may be the crucial campaign of the war. That is a challenge of a very different dimension beyond the experience of nearly all of us.
In the cult Chinese sci-fi trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, extra-terrestrials have ambitions to take over Earth and govern it benevolently.
They have a specific proviso: The human race, having wrecked the environment by creating a planet which oscillates between extreme heat and extreme cold, must be removed from the equation so nature can recover.
Whether such on-message eco communications have been received from unknown constellations such as the imaginary Trisolaris and are being stored alongside crashed UFOs is the province of some truly remarkable hearings before the US Congress.
The House oversight committee this week heard evidence from defence analyst David Grusch, a retired air force major, that the US government had collected and attempted to rebuild alien spacecraft and that ‘non-human’ beings had been found.
While all this intrigue sounds a little bit Roswell — the mysterious discovery of debris in New Mexico which stoked the ‘flying saucer’ frenzy in 1947 and ever since — other critics have been quick to debunk the testimony.
The spirit of the times is ripe for conspiracy theories, and you do not need to be Fox Mulder or Dana Scully to know we are going to hear more of them.
, much admired by former US president Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and author George R R Martin, is due to run on Netflix from January. It has been created by the writing team that delivered .
We would all do well to remember the self-evident corollary of the most famous quote from : “The truth is out there, but so are lies.”
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