MINISTER FOR Justice Dermot Ahern said the Government could not engage in "legislative acts of delusion" in the wake of the Shane Geoghegan murder in Limerick.
"There is a fundamental point which we have to bear in mind: we simply cannot legislate away the need for evidence," he added.
Mr Ahern said that the Government had made substantial changes to the criminal law.
While the 2006 and 2007 Criminal Justice Acts did not receive unanimous support in the House, he did not believe anyone would dispute that they were a genuine attempt to take any and all legislative action which the Government believed was open to it to counteract the problem of gangland crime.
Speaking during a special debate on the Limerick murder, Mr Ahern said calls had been made for the greater use of the Special Criminal Court.
In fact, he added, the court could be, and had been, used in dealing with gang members charged with offences unrelated to paramilitary activity.
He said he did not dispute the "superficial attractiveness" of the proposal that the court be utilised in the context of using opinion evidence from a chief superintendent relating to a person's participation in a gang. "But all the advice available to me is that it could bring with it insuperable problems," Mr Ahern added.
The courts had already held that such evidence was not conclusive and, in practice, had tended to disregard such evidence if the accused denied it on oath.
The situation was even more fraught with difficulty if such evidence were to be used in ordinary courts, because of its prejudicial effect and doubts about its constitutionality.
"The Garda Commissioner has already expressed the view that the laws are adequate for the gardaí to tackle the particular issues they are confronting at present," he added.
"That does not mean, of course, that either he or I have a closed mind in taking forward measured changes in the law as part of the process of keeping our general criminal law under review, and these will include legislation on surveillance and DNA."
Fine Gael spokesman Charlie Flanagan said there was no deterrent to killing enemies and innocents if conviction was a remote possibility.
Almost 30,000 bench warrants remained outstanding, he said. "The bottom line is that there is something rotten in our criminal justice system and this rot needs to be stopped before more innocent people are murdered," Mr Flanagan added.
Labour spokesman Pat Rabbitte said that modern crime needed modern responses, and the Garda must be given the appropriate powers to enable them not just to detect crime but to prevent it.
"Most people will be surprised to learn that the Garda currently has no legal powers to undertake electronic surveillance of criminal suspects, although those powers form a central part of the anti-crime armoury of most countries," he added.
Mr Rabbitte said the Government could amend a Labour Party Bill, providing for aural and visual surveillance, if it better served the purpose of protecting citizens and putting gangs out of commission.
Sinn Féin spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh said there was an understandable fear among people about reporting serious criminals to gardaí.
Scanners used by the criminals were becoming so prevalent that the Garda radio frequency was known as "radio gaga''.
"The introduction of secure digital radio for gardaí in Limerick would solve this problem," said Mr Ó Snodaigh.
