His predecessor never had it this good. Less than seven months in the job and John O'Donoghue's numbers have come up trumps. The drop of almost 10 per cent in reported crimes last year is an impressively round figure for the zero-tolerance Minister for Justice to put in his cap.
Yesterday, Mr O'Donoghue paid tribute to the Garda Commissioner and his force and promised not to rest on any laurels. "There will be no complacency and my objective is to go on and build on this solid foundation, and to move forward," he said.
His predecessor, Nora Owen, and her former colleagues could be forgiven for a little gnashing of teeth as Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats start reaping the benefits of policies implemented by the Rainbow Coalition.
Before the general election, quarterly Garda figures were already indicating a drop in the crime levels of about 5 per cent. New legislation had been passed following the murder of Veronica Guerin and Garda initiatives like Operation Dochas in Dublin had changed the approach to policing inner-city areas.
Two months before the Rainbow Coalition lost the election Nora Owen got to do a little basking as quarterly figures for 1997 showed the graph going down for the first time since 1989.
However, an earlier opinion poll was a damning indictment of the Rainbow Coalition's crime policy. Most people believed crime was getting worse and only 30 per cent believed the Garda was getting on top of the situation.
The new figures will help to further boost Garda morale. One senior officer described it yesterday as a "feel-good factor" that has finally spread to the force. One of the most encouraging elements is the sharp fall in the number of firearms offences.
And while almost 250 crimes a day were committed last year, the vast majority were against property rather than people.
The large increase in reported rapes, up 41 per cent since 1996, is a startling exception to the falling rates of other crimes. Olive Braiden, of the Rape Crisis Centre, has said the increase may reflect more reports of rape rather than an increase in rapes.
Those commentators who have criticised the media for hyping the crime crisis and fuelling the fear of crime will see the figures as further evidence that Ireland's "crime crisis" is a figment of editors' imaginations.
The figures on Garda detection, the number of persistent offenders who may be serving prison sentences and any demographic analysis of the number of young men - the vast majority of offenders - in the community would all add to our understanding of yesterday's figures.
But the bald figures appear to represent a return to the crime level of the early 1990s. When the number of indictable offences topped 100,000 for the first time in 1994, it was seen as the psychological low point. Politicians and gardai will be relieved to see it dropping back and will fervently hope it remains there.