THE Minister for Justice has said she is "not aware of widespread corruption in the Garda Siochana". Mrs Owen was responding to questions about allegations that gardai were involved with drug traffickers.
She had read the remarks of the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, on Monday "in which he has indicated that almost all of the stories which appeared in the Sunday papers have no basis in fact".
"If there are gardai who are breaking the law then, like any other citizen in this country, they will be brought to justice and have to answer for any wrong-doing that they have been involved in. But I am not aware of widespread corruption in the Garda Siochana.
"I am aware there are two investigations only going on and they are very specific investigations . . . not in a general way."
Mrs Owen was speaking after addressing an EU drugs conference in Dublin Castle yesterday. The Minister told the conference - "A Seminar and Citizens'
Hearing on Combating the Drugs Problem" - that drug use was becoming "more and more difficult to tackle".
She said this was due to increased use of synthetic drugs and changes in the age and type of people using drugs.
One contributor asked Mrs Owen if Cabinet confidentiality would extend to the new Cabinet drugs committee, to be chaired by the Taoiseach.
She said any policy decided by the Ministers would be known. "You need have no fear about getting information out of the policy group."
The Minister said that during its EU presidency the Republic was striving to improve co-operation among member-states, as well as with the US, Russia and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
She said exchange programmes involving police officers from a number of countries were an effective way "to prevent exploitation by criminals of our differences".
Mr Jurgen Storbeck, of Europol, the information-sharing bureau for EU police forces, told participants the drug business in Europe had been helped by a growth in commercial trade. Nearly two million trucks passed between Germany and its eastern neighbours annually while four million containers passed through Rotterdam harbour every year.
Border checks, meanwhile, had been relaxed due to trade agreements. "These developments have had the undesired side-effect of providing greater opportunities for illicit drug-trafficking."
Mr Storbeck said that despite police successes in finding drug consignments, "even high seizure rates have failed to lead to a proportional reduction in consumption".
"The sad fact is that drugs have remained so abundantly available on the market that prices have even dropped to around 40 to 5O per cent of what they were 10 years ago
Mr Storbeck said cannabis was the most widely used drug in the EU, with most of the drug found in member-states coming from Morocco. He believed cocaine was increasingly popular as it was becoming "plentiful and steadily cheaper".