IT MAY offer little consolation, but at least the last words spoken by Veronica Guerin were words of joy. She rang a friend on her mobile telephone as she drove to Dublin from Naas courthouse, delighted that she had only been fined for a speeding offence, and had avoided having her licence taken away.

She made contact only with her friend's answering service, as she drew up at traffic lights near the city. "I beat the rap!" she said into the telephone, and then began explaining about the fine.

The explanation was cut short. The next sound that can be heard on the recording is of gunfire.

Next Thursday is the first anniversary of Veronica Guerin's murder, an assassination which will probably prove as important as any in the State's history.

Her death was a shock not only to all who knew her, but to the hundreds of thousands of Irish people who felt they did, and were grateful for her attempts to expose the activities of gangland bosses which the State had failed to tackle.

In the days following her death members of the public showed their grief and their anger spontaneously. British newspapers joined Irish ones in publicly committing themselves to continuing the investigative work which had cost her her life. Politicians promised tough new measures.

The shock of the murder was shared by members of the Garda which had been making limited progress in investigating the gang-land shootings which culminated in her murder.

A year later far more progress has been made than was expected at the time. With the backing of new laws and - probably more importantly - a new political will throughout the State's crime-fighting bureaucracy, some of the State's biggest criminals are on the run.

The main drug-running gangster Guerin had been writing about before she was shot is now in custody abroad, as a result of information gathered by the detectives investigating her murder. Other underworld figures have fled to Spain or Amsterdam, from where they send lawyers to fight the State's efforts to seize their homes and the cash in their bank accounts.

In the years leading up to her murder, Veronica Guerin had helped make these figures familiar - initially only through nick-names such as the Boxer, the Penguin, the Monk. The nicknames were a device to circumvent libel laws - like wealthy law-abiding citizens, gangsters can hire the best legal advice.

In the last articles before her murder, Guerin started to put real names and faces to the nicknames, forcing into the public arena identities known to relatively few.

For as long as the State had been afraid to move against them, the main drug dealers had operated with relative impunity. They felt harassed by the gardai from time to time, were frequently arrested and questioned for hours, but they always knew they if they said nothing stupid, they would soon be back in business.

Public exposure was different, and the murder of the journalist was the criminals' ghastly tribute to the importance of her work.

In the immediate aftermath of her murder, the Government threw almost everything to hand at the criminals. The Garda was given free rein to pursue her killers - and a 100-officer team assembled around Lucan Garda station achieved spectacular results (see below). Two people - one of whom fled abroad for a period - now face serious charges as a result of the investigation.

Legal measures included the bail referendum, in which the public agreed to broaden the grounds on which someone could be refused bail, and asset-seizing legislation which required suspected criminals to show that their wealth is not from crime.

The Government also promised an overhaul of the Garda, although a review group which reported to the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, recommended even tougher laws, while postponing the overhaul.

On the streets of Dublin the Garda mounted Operation Dochas, aimed at reducing open drug dealing by the smaller pushers and addicts.

But the most significant measure has been the setting up of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), an office where gardai, Revenue and Social Welfare officials work together to prepare tax assessments on the criminals. In some ways the CAB is the retail end of a much bigger behind-the-scenes operation, with the bulk of the preparatory work carried out by detectives from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, and the force's criminal investigation and drug units.

Before Ms Guerin's murder an initiative such as the CAB was suggested many times, but there was no political will to push the idea past the resistance of bureaucrats who knew little, and cared less, of the dangers posed by the crime gangs.

The major criminals which were the subject of Veronica Guerin's articles are now down, but far from out. And a new generation of dealers is starting to feed the demand for drugs which the older criminals cannot now meet because their networks are so disrupted.

The Guerin investigation and the wider moves against the drug barons have shown that only constant pressure by the State at all levels - from vigilance against street dealing to monitoring of the most sophisticated international financial transactions - can achieve results against organised crime gangs.