WE will not have an efficient and effective criminal justice system until a comprehensive overview is taken of its varied strands and root and branch reforms are implemented.

Successive governments have, in recent years, too frequently responded to an individual tragic event or major crime with piece meal fire brigade measures designed to meet public relations needs. However, they have failed utterly to put in place the comprehensive coherent strategy required to provide the reforms necessary to competently meet the threat posed by the individual criminal and organised crime to social stability and to every individual in this State.

In viewing the Department of Justice and its various Ministers from the outside over the years, the impression is too often given that there is no one in charge who is cap able of looking at the full panoply of the criminal justice system to determine what is required to point it firmly in the direction of the 21st century.

Individual initiatives have been announced by Ministers for Justice without any evidence that what was being proposed was fully thought through or that essential structures were in place to ensure its implementation. What is missing is the essential thread of the comprehensive view.

For example, we were told in July, 1995, that there was to be greater co operation between gardai and the Revenue authorities in bringing criminals to account for unexplained and undeclared wealth. It now appears that for about a year after this was announced, little happened.

Finally, last week, as part of the Government's new crime initiative, an announcement was made that on Thursday next, an internal committee (formed about 21/2 weeks earlier) will be reporting to Government on the setting up of a special unit, headed by a garda, comprising gardai, Revenue and social welfare officials, to target suspect assets.

This initiative announced a year ago but not yet implemented should have been in place years ago. No public explanation has been given as to why this Government or its predecessors found it so difficult to provide structures which ensure full co-operation between all State agencies in the fight against drugs, a great deal more needs to be done in the justice area. Anti-racketeering legislation is required to facilitate the use by gardai of sophisticated surveillance tools in evidence gathering and to enable the evidence to be used in court. A government sanctioned witness protection programme is also required.

The Garda also needs to adopt new operational measures. Intensive surveillance and targeting of crime bosses over extended periods has proved effective in other jurisdictions yet it is rarely employed here.

WE have had tragic incidents of young people attending discos and raves and dying from ecstasy. There should be gardai working undercover at major disco and rave events and they should have powers to close them down.

The Government is right to seek to change the bail laws by allowing the courts to refuse bail where there is a substantial risk of serious offences by a person awaiting trial. It is also ludicrous that criminals caught red handed in a bank with guns or with a substantial amount of drugs in their possession clearly for sale are, following arrest, simply re-released into the community pending trial.

However, until such time as a substantial number of extra prison places are in place, no such change to the bail laws can be effectively implemented.

We do not have and will not have before 1999 sufficient prison accommodation to ensure those convicted of offences fully serve their sentences. For over 10 years, successive governments have used the mechanism of temporary or early release to relieve congestion in our prisons.

An increasing number on temporary or early release prisoners are re-offending. The reality is that temporary and early releases are undermining our criminal justice system, making a nonsense of judicial sentencing policy, demoralising the Garda and making an increasing number of criminals feel invulnerable.

Years ago, the prospect of a pending trial acted as an effective deterrent to further crimes being committed. During the 1970s, this changed and approximately 10 per cent of all reported crime was ultimately being committed by those awaiting trial. Provisions contained in the Criminal Justice, Act, 1984, providing for consecutive sentencing, substantially reduced the number of crimes committed by those on bail. By 1990, approximately 2 per cent of reported crime was so committed.

In recent years, it has crept up to 4 per cent. This has coincided with a substantial increase in the delay between a person being charged and his or her trial.

The Government's promised new laws to ensure the imposition of consecutive sentences and to make provision for the confiscation of bail monies is welcome. However, the most effective means of addressing this issue is to ensure those charged with criminal offences are brought to trial early. It should not have taken the tragic death of Veronica Guerin (whose death is unconnected with this issue) to force the Government to address this problem.

There is now a commitment to appoint extra judges to tackle the trial backlog. Unless additional court space is provided, there will be nowhere for them to sit.

THE need for a integrated prosecution service to end the fragmentation of work that now occurs between the office of the Director of Public Prosecution and the Chief State Solicitor's office in Dublin and State Solicitors" offices around the country is well documented in a report published last week.

This is an issue first raised by me over five years ago and which has been discussed publicly in the past by the DPP. Implementation of the recommendations contained in this report should form part of the Government's programme.

Our forensic scientists must also be provided with the tools they require in fighting crime. Equipment used in carrying out genetic (DNA) fingerprinting must be updated.

In enacting new legislation, we must ensure that we do not put in place measures which, on paper and in public relation terms, appear to be worthwhile responses and which could, in reality, create great difficulty in securing convictions.

For example, in the past we discovered that allowing gardai to detain in custody those suspected of cries for many days could ultimately render it impossible to secure convictions due to persons questioned being ill treated when held in custody or making false allegations of ill treatment.

Provisions contained in the Criminal Justice (Drug Trafficking) Bill, 1996, when implemented will allow for suspects of drug trafficking to be held for questioning for up to seven days. I fully support this legislation but believe it is a major error that it is not intended to ensure the video recording of all interviews of those questioned when held in custody under it.

The Criminal Justice Act, 1984, made provision for the video recording of the questioning of those held. Such recording is successfully used by police forces in many parts of the world. It is an indictment of successive governments that we have only put in place video recording pilot projects in two Garda stations.

Most people are rightly impatient with the public posturing of the political parties on crime and are sceptical of the public tendering for political support inherent in the various competitive press conferences and statements of recent days. They deserve and are entitled to more from those who govern and who have been in government.