It was a disarmingly honest admission from Junior Minister Gay Mitchell in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Veronica Guerin. "Within the Dail", he declared, "there is a relatively small number of people who understand the extent of this problem".
Yet within days of that acknowledgment, the same members of the same House, the overwhelming majority of whom for so long had not bothered to know, were virtually at one on the measures which are to be taken on the criminal justice system. From ignorance and indifference, there is a leap overnight to certitude, driven by the fury of public opinion. One is reminded of the remark attributed to Andrew Bonar Law. "There goes the mob. We are its leaders. We must follow".
If the politicians response to crime and the direction of the criminal justice system were to be a measure of the governance of this State it would be possible to argue that we are hardly fit to run our own affairs. Fortunately, it is the exception rather than the rule in a country which is by and large run to plan and with efficiency. But what an exception it has been. It stands, a shocking monument to political indifference, to slovenly parliamentary standards and to bureaucratic ineptitude.
It is not simply that the politicians do not understand the extent of the crime problem. They do not understand the sophistication and complexity which have to apply in the running of a modern criminal justice system. They do not know or understand that criminal justice has long been an important science n its own right, with a great body of learning and experience built up internationally, little if any of which has ever been introduced in this jurisdiction.
They do not know because they have never bothered to know. The dismal performance of successive Ministers for Justice has been matched by their Opposition front bench counterparts. How many of them have ever taken a day to visit prisons - here or abroad? Or taken a night with the garda on the streets of Dublin? Or spent an air fare or a researcher's wage for a month examining the best practices in any of our neighbour EU countries?
Thus we have had years of ad hoc responses of measures taken in isolation of mindless word forming and empty rhetoric. Where was the response from the politicians when Commissioner Patrick Culligan, two years ago in this newspaper, implored them for a public dialogue on the role and the priorities of the Garda? Where were the responses when the Director of Public Prosecutions, three years ago, declared that the existing procedures were simply incapable of delivering convictions in certain categories of serious crime?
Now, after crime and its practitioners have once again raised the ante, we are about to embark on another "package". But we have no way of knowing whether it is too much or too little. We are likely to yield up some of the most important safeguards in our system of justice. Will it be sufficient to take out the criminal bosses or will it simply cost every citizen the loss of valuable rights and protections? Is there the slightest evidence to suggest that what is now in contemplation has any considered or informed basis? It may go too far. It may not go far enough. Why, for example, do we propose to try drug related offences before the Special Criminal Court but not kidnapping and extortion cases? Why do we propose to abridge the right to silence in drugs related cases but not for armed robbery or, as the DPP asked three years ago, for fraud?
We are at a critical point in determining the future quality of life in our society and for the future of our legal system. And we are not in steady hands insofar as these issues are concerned.
Rather are we witnessing a dangerous phenomenon; a Government which has been badly frightened, which has been exposed in its ineptitude and which in these matters may not have the judgment, the knowledge or the shared sense of purpose which are needed.