THE WAVE of shock caused by the murder of Veronica Guerin may have subsided. But the recent letter to this paper from her brother, Jimmy Guerin, and the reply to it today from the managing director of Independent Newspapers, David Palmer, show the debate about the lessons to be learned from her death is only just beginning.

Mr Guerin told The Irish Times: he believed his sister's death could have been avoided if one of several options had been acted upon when it became clear, after three serious attacks on her by criminal elements, that her life was in danger.

She could have been given the assistance of other journalists on her; more dangerous crime stories. Mr Guerin pointed out that where there is a team of investigative reporters, such as on the Sunday Times's "Insight" team, "there's no point in going after one journalist because there are four or five others who are fully familiar with the facts".

Alternatively, her employers could have "insisted that she be accompanied by security people or, failing that, diverted to stories other than crime until things cooled down". Ulimately, Mr Guerin said, where a reporter continues to insist on working on a story in extremely dangerous conditions it is an editor's job to say "Sorry, but no".

Mr Palmer's letter counters by emphasising that if editors give in to intimidation, freedom of speech will be the first casualty. No editor, he writes, can force an intrepid campaigning journalist like Veronica Guerin to stop work on a story, work with others or take police protection; no editor can give journalists an absolute guarantee of safety.

But is there anything that editors and publishers can do to minimise the risks investigative journalists run when they work on stories involving organised criminals, paramilitary groups and civil war factions?

Most editors believe not. The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said he has no guidelines except not to send inexperienced people into dangerous situations; to tell reporters as they go out the door not to do anything stupid; and to make sure they are covered by "normal protection and insurance".

"Once they get out there reporters like Maggie O'Kane and Ed Vulliamy aren't going to follow any guidelines I lay down anyway. They know the situation on the ground better than I do and I just have to trust in their judgment and discretion." (See panel.)

"We can't protect you. Nobody can protect you fully. You're doing a dangerous and important job," journalists studying investigative journalism techniques are told by their tutors at the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) training centre at Columbia, Missouri, the largest of its type in the United States.

IRE tells investigative journalists from different news organisations hat they should try to overcome some of their traditional secrecy and passionate independence and exchange information when they are dealing with particularly dangerous stories.

Executive director Ms Rosemary Armao recalls the case of Don Bolles, the Phoenix Republic reporter killed by a car bomb while investigating the links between organised crime and big business in Arizona in 1976.

She said it is very reminiscent of Veronica Guerin's killing. "If a reporter can be killed on a public street in broad daylight in a democracy like the US, then there is no freedom of expression any more."

Scores of top American journalists agreed with her. In an unprecedented display of solidarity, reporters from all over the country came together in Arizona to continue Don Bolles's investigation, putting out more than 20 major newspaper and broadcast stories over the next six months.

"If Irish journalists were to stick together and carry on her work in that way that would be the best protection for them," said Ms Armao. "Then the crime bosses would know they could not get rid of stories about the drug trade in Dublin just by killing Veronica Guerin."

Sunday Independent editor Aengus Fanning said his paper is now "looking actively" at the possibility of setting up a team of two or three journalists to work on future high risk stories, although he is clearly not contemplating anything as revolutionary as competing newspapers pooling their resources to expose Dublin's drug barons.

He is also considering the idea of "minders", people who would travel with reporters at risk, perhaps as their drivers. Journalists and television crews in conflict areas such as Somalia and Bosnia have often hired local men to fulfill this function.

The Sunday World's investigative crime reporter, Paul Williams, hash had round the clock monitoring of his house and movements by a private security firm for some time, and occasionally travels with a bodyguard. He said his security was stepped up dramatically following the Guerin murder.

The National Union of Journalists is also doing some hard thinking. On October 9th it is holding a seminar in Dublin on investigative journalism and the risks associated with it with Robert Fisk of the Independent and Bill Orme from the New York based Committee To Protect Journalists as keynote speakers. The NUJ is planning to draw up a series of principles, to be named after Veronica Guerin, to allow the journalists who take up her difficult mantle to be better protected.

The NUJ's Irish secretary, Eoin Ronayne, hopes newspaper proprietors, independent radio station owners and RTE will all sign up to these. He points out that there is nothing in journalists' training to prepare them for threats or violence.

He worries, too, that some of the most courageous young journalists - like Veronica Guerin and Maggie O'Kane in her early years in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia - are freelances. They are sometimes not covered by a paper's insurance and enjoy little of the benefit of the influence a major national newspaper or broadcasting station can bring to bear if one of their staff journalists is endangered in a place such as Bosnia or Belfast.

Aengus Fanning said he cannot see how bringing Veronica Guerin on to the Sunday Independent's staff - rather than allowing her to work as a freelance journalist on contract - could have saved her life. However, he has given her successor, Liz Allen, the greater security of a staff job.

"Veronica Guerin's killing has changed our world. Until that happened we thought the risks to journalists were in war zones, not from domestic crime," said Eoin Ronayne. "Now we're going to have to rethink our traditional belief that we're untouchable here at home just because people respect our independence.