"NEVER in the history of criminal law have such far reaching proposals been put forward on the strength of such flimsy and dubious evidence." Britain's former lord chief justice, Lord Taylor, was criticising Home Secretary Michael Howard's "get tough" sentencing plans, but he could just as well have been commenting on the forthcoming bail referendum here.

The Government wants to amend the Constitution so that bail can be refused to people on the grounds that they might commit offences while awaiting trial, something the courts have consistently refused to do for the last 30 years.

But nobody knows just how many or what proportion of crimes are committed by people out on bail. There has been no research. The estimates range from 4 per cent to 9 per cent and despite the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment, which talks about "serious" offences, the bulk of offences committed on bail appear to be non life threatening petty crimes.

And nobody knows which of the people out on bail are likely to reoffend. Studies in other countries show that it is impossible to accurately predict who will re offend. In fact, nobody even knows whether refusing bail to likely re offenders reduces crime. In England and Wales, where the courts can and do refuse bail to people thought likely to reoffend, the proportion of offences committed while on bail appears to be higher than here.

It has been estimated that up to 600 more people would be remanded in custody at any given time if the bail amendment is carried. That amounts to more than one quarter of the present prison population. Where would the Government put them? The prisons are chronically overcrowded already, and it is well known that sentenced prisoners are constantly being released early to make way for new inmates.

The Taoiseach has said the prison places will be provided, but his Government has not even addressed the existing overcrowding yet, much less begun building a new remand centre. In the meantime, if the number of remand prisoners is increased, convicted prisoners will have to be released to make more room for unconvicted ones. What effect will that have on crime rates?

This referendum has all the hallmarks of an ill thought out panic measure to show the Government is tough on crime and to avoid being upstaged by Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats for the law and order vote. The Government has done no research on the figures or on the likely effect of its proposals. The only serious study of this issue was done by the Law Reform Commission last year, which highlighted the lack of figures and the real problems involved in refusing bail to people because of assumptions about what they might do in the future.

Panic measures make bad law because they risk long term damage to the justice system for the sake of short term gain, and this proposal threatens to undermine a fundamental principle of our law, lead to people being wrongly imprisoned and distract attention from more crucial aspects of the crime problem.

Our whole justice system is based on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty and that they must not be deprived of their liberty unless convicted and sentenced by a court. There is one exception to that. Bail may be refused where there is a serious danger that the accused will not turn up for trial or will interfere with witnesses or evidence.

It has been held for many years that this exception is necessary to ensure the functioning of the whole system. To extend it any further, however, would amount to a form of preventive detention which was condemned by the Supreme Court in powerful judgments in 1966 and 1988 and which would be open to considerable abuse.

In more colloquial terms, it would amount to internment before trial, and there have been many complaints that similar measures in Northern Ireland and Britain have been used to detain people in custody for long periods on flimsy charges which may then be dropped before they come to trial.

Even at the moment, around 60 per cent of people remanded in custody do not end up with prison sentences. About 15 per cent are acquitted. Others are convicted, but the courts decide that a prison sentence is inappropriate. Double the numbers remanded in custody and we would double the numbers of innocent or inappropriate people who spend time n prison, with all the devastating consequences for them.

There are other dangers, too. Figures from Britain show that the suicide rate for remand prisoners is four times that for sentenced prisoners. It is unlikely to be any lower here, and we already have an unacceptable rate of prison suicides.

This amendment would also put enormous power in the hands of the Garda as the courts would have to rely heavily on the Garda view of whether the accused was likely to reoffend. That power could be abused to secure false confessions or false accusations against others in return for not opposing bail.

It is not as if there is no alternative to the referendum. There are measures that could be taken to curb bail offending without taking the drastic step of interfering with the Constitution. The most obvious one is reducing the time between charge and trial and between conviction and appeal.

The Law Reform Commission commented that speedier trials "may well be the most effective remedy". A minor legislative change could also ensure that the courts imposed consecutive sentences for offences committed on bail and/or imposed conditions of good behaviour, breach of which could lead to forfeiture of bail money.

These measures could drastically reduce bail offending. The Government says it intends to implement several of them anyway. Why not take these steps and evaluate their effect before interfering with the Constitutions

There is also a serious danger that, by focusing concern on the issue of bail offending, attention will be distracted from the more serious issue of drugs and the failure of successive governments to grapple with this problem.

It is generally acknowledged that up to 80 per cent of crime is now drug related. The greatest contribution the Government could make to reducing crime would be to reduce the demand for drugs. What we most need now is an emergency programme of drugs education, prevention and treatment facilities.

To provide prison places for all the extra people who will be refused bail if this proposal is carried will cost around £40 million. The Government recently announced grants of £14 million for drugs treatment and prevention in inner city areas.

Surely it has got its priorities wrong?