LAST night's announcement, by the Taoiseach that the prison and courts functions of, the Department of Justice are to be handed over to new agencies is an unexpectedly radical reform of what has been arguably the State's most powerful ministry.

But the two initiatives should not be lumped together. The Government had already accepted the idea of a separate body for running the courts. The real surprise is that it has gone a stage further and accepted the decade-old argument for an independent prisons board.

The case for a new way of running the courts was well established, and it was Mrs Owen herself who introduced proposals for reforming the system in May this year when she presented a report from the Working Group on a Courts Commission chaired by the Supreme Court judge, Mrs Justice Denham.

The report recommended an independent Courts Services Board to take over management of the system.

The Denham report found there was no clear management structure or accountability in the courts system, and no mechanism for planning beyond day-to-day matters. The courts system was fragmented with poor communication between its constituent parts, and little understanding of how new technology could help. The gravest consequence was the lengthy delays - often a year or more - for serious cases.

In September the Central Criminal Court opened three weeks early, at the direction of the Minister, because there were so many cases to be heard.

Even a casual ear to the bench over the last year would have reinforced the point. Judges have increasingly voiced their dissatisfaction over the system, and only last month Judge Cyril Kelly, in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, apologised to a full courtroom for not being able to start a case scheduled for hearing. There were 22 witnesses for the trial, including one from abroad, eight from Kerry and others from Cork and Waterford. But there was no judge available. "These are matters outside my control," he said.

IF the Government had already, favoured the idea of a separate organisation to run the courts, it and its predecessors had long set their faces against an independent, prisons authority.

The case for devolution of prison functions from the Department of Justice was most forcefully made in 1985 in the "Whitaker Report" - the report of the Committee of inquiry into the Penal System, chaired by Dr T.K. Whitaker. The report said that "the detailed administration of prisons has moved to an excessive degree into the Department of Justice, to the detriment of discretion and responsibility, and therefore good management". Ultimate responsibility should remain with the Minister for Justice, but there should be a separate agency or board responsible for running the system, it said.

Over the past 11 years the shortcomings of the prison system which Whitaker sought to redress have grown ever more acute. More often than not the system appears to have been run by successive governments with a minimum of planning, or even a definable prison policy. In this Government's lifetime the Castlerea prison project was first on, then off, then on again, according to budgetary arguments and the politics of the day rather than the trends of the prison population.

THE fact that prison officers are paid a total of £16 million a year in overtime says, planning enough about the financial planning of the system. The public is more aware of the litany of escapes from escorts and absconding from open prisons, which raise questions about procedures. In addition the "revolving-door" releases an estimated 4,000 prisoners a year early due to lack of space.

The expected change in the bail laws will greatly add to the pressure, despite the Government's plan to increase the number of prison spaces from 2,200 to 3,000. The Taoiseach said last month there would be "a slow build-up" of extra remand prisoners following a bail law change and the system would cope.

But limited research into the penal system means his promise owed more to optimism than information.

For Nora Owen, there is one glimmer of light in what must be a dark week. Her equivalent in Britain, the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, survived a grave crisis over prison escapes by firing his director of prisons, Mr Derek Lewis. Mr, Howard said there was a clear case for responsibility and accountability, and so Mr Lewis had to go. The Minister might take comfort from the thought of putting someone else into the firing line.