New legislation making organised crime a specific criminal offence will be contained in the Criminal Justice Bill, to be published by the Department of Justice on Thursday. The Bill will also contain provisions which will allow retracted witness statements to be used in trials against suspects.
The move tackles some of the issues raised during the murder trial of Limerick teenager Liam Keane last November which collapsed after statements were retracted.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said the changes would be modelled on the Canadian legal system. He told The Irish Times last night that the new legislation would not criminalise gang membership because there were difficulties with the legal definition of a gang.
"It could be two people doing jump-overs in a bank. But if it is clear that somebody is engaged in organised crime the new legislation will deal with that."
He added the new law might not be used very regularly because prosecutions would depend on criminal associates becoming the State's witnesses and testifying against each other. This kind of testimony was difficult to obtain, he said.
However, the new legislation will allow gardaí and juries to draw inferences from evidence collected against those in organised crime.
Mr McDowell has said he had known of cases where suspected gang members had been found with boiler suits, disguises and maps of premises and people's routes to and from work. While it was obvious that they were planning a kidnapping, legislation did not allow that inference to be drawn.
Under the new legislation, suspects found with questionable documents will have to have a good explanation.
The Minister said he was encouraged by some of the long jail sentences handed down to drug dealers in recent months. He believed the gardaí in west Dublin, where the Emergency Response Unit was deployed last year, had "gotten on top of gangs like the Westies". Two members of the gang - Mr Shane Coates and Mr Stephen Sugg - went missing in Spain almost six months ago.
Mr McDowell said he believed they had gone missing "because the temperature got too hot for them" in Dublin. When asked if he thought they were dead or alive he said: "They're probably off sunning themselves somewhere."
The Minister described as appropriate the sentences of up to six years handed down on Tuesday to nine criminals in Limerick convicted for violent disorder. "When they \ see a general background of criminality, and not just an isolated act, the judiciary must confront that."
He said new provisions in the legislation would "deal with" the Liam Keane collapsed murder trial.
Mr Keane walked free from court after witnesses suffered "collective amnesia" and either withdrew or changed statements they had given to gardaí incriminating him in the murder of Limerick man Mr Eric Leamy in 2001.
