It might have been something of a landmark in public dialogue had tonight's edition of The Late Late Show gone ahead as planned. Forty TDs were to face a studio of ordinary citizens. Not journalists or public figures but people from everyday life, with their concerns and hopes, fears and expectations. The Chief Whips have cancelled out, having decided that the programme would be "wholly inappropriate and out of keeping with the constitutional status and dignity" of the Dail.
That the parliamentarians should now so uncharacteristically shy away from the TV cameras, is perhaps not surprising. The sequence of brutal crimes up and down the country has brought public anger to a pitch that has seldom been so openly expressed. And that anger is not directed at the Garda or at the prison service or even at the judges. It is directed, rightly, at the politicians. Ms Nora Owen is the most proximate target of anger but in mitigation of her performance, all of the parties are seen to share in the blame.
Successive Ministers have sat in Nora Owen's seat, adding to the store of neglect and crisis in the criminal justice system. Successive opposition spokespersons have shadowed them in the Dail. Seldom have their contributions risen above the facile and the fatuous. If any of them has had the benefit of any research work or any background immersion in their briefs they have seldom shown it. Has any one of them ever ventured to a comparable jurisdiction to see how its police, or prisons, or courts operate? Or how societies similar to our own have co ordinated justice, education and social programmes to avoid the criminalisation of the young?
What have the politicians done about the Whitaker report on the prisons which recommended the setting up of an independent prisons authority? What have they done about the Conroy report on the Garda which urged - 25 years ago - a redefinition of the force's role and functions? What have they done about Commissioner Culligan's plea for dialogue on its priorities and resources? What have they done about the call by Mr Eamonn Barnes for the creation of a unified prosecution service, for reconsideration of the right to silence and for substituting an inquisitorial system for an adversarial one in certain cases? The answer in each case is, absolutely nothing.
The fact is that for most members of Dail Eireann, interest in the criminal justice system has seldom extended beyond getting persons of similar political persuasion into the right jobs in the police force or the judiciary. Beyond that, there have been some set speeches on the demise of the man on the beat, the low state of Garda morale and, latterly, the need for more prison spaces to end the revolving door syndrome.
Small wonder then that we are in the present state of alarm. The gardai appear to be checkmated at every level of crime investigation other than where the perpetrator is some hapless amateur or addict. The force's preventive role is history. They are procedurally hampered to the degree that a criminal of any sophistication has nothing to fear from detention or questioning. The bail laws are ludicrous. And the administration of the prisons seems to ensure that relatively trivial offenders spend longer in custody here than abroad; while professional criminals are set at liberty with only a fraction of their sentence served.
Meanwhile, in the urban ghettos, new generations are growing up to the conviction that there are no rules other than those of the strong over the weak, those of the violent over the vulnerable. That there are no sanctions which can be brought to bear on those who are sufficiently ruthless. And that the gun, the knife or the fist is the way to achieve what one has been denied through life's circumstances. There are shared crises here for those who work in law enforcement, in education, in environmental planning, in healthcare, in social policy. But where are the joint programmes? Where is the co ordinated community action? Where are the national policies?
They too stand on the politicians' list of failures. Little wonder that they want to avoid the Late Late cameras this weekend.