THE ardfheis decisively endorsed the zero tolerance policy on crime advocated by the party spokesman on justice, Mr John O'Donoghue.
"Our policy does not change for critic or for convert. For Fianna Fail there is no acceptable level of crime," he said. "Whatever the commitment, we in Fianna Fail are determined to see our crime policy enacted and enforced."
He said in his party's view there were no insignificant crimes. Tolerance of small crimes created a climate where big crimes flourished and where there was a certain connection between less and more serious crimes. Tolerance of lesser crimes or violations sends the wrong signal to the average law-abiding citizen that the Garda and the Government are ineffective.
Mr Peter Power, a candidate in Limerick East, said zero tolerance did not mean people being arrested for parking or litter offences, as some politicians and journalists claimed. It means approaching crime from the victim's point of view. For an elderly widow or widower to have his or her house burgled and ransacked is in many ways more significant than the robbing of money from banks."
Mr Derek Mooney, Dublin South Central, said it was a Labour minister who had postponed work on Castlerea Prison and the proposed women's prison in Mountjoy. "But Labour is not unique in its hypocrisy. What about Fine Gael, the one-time party of law and order? As we were recently reminded, there was a time when you could hardly pick up a phone without a Fine Gael minister listening in. Now their Ministers for Justice cannot muster the interest to read their mail. He said zero tolerance meant being proactive in stopping criminal behaviour develop rather than being reactive and chasing criminals after they had seriously offended.
Mr Noel Heaslip, Kerry North, said the quicker the Government left office, the better. "We will have to take crime by the scruff of the neck and get the rot out of our society."
Mr O'Donoghue said jurisprudence on the rights of persons accused of criminal offences was plentiful, which was no bad thing. "It is proper that society should have confidence in the verdicts of its courts. It is proper that the constitutional rights of everybody in society should be protected by the Oireachtas and the courts.
"It is time the Government took action to vindicate the rights of ordinary people the right to walk the street in safety and to live without fear, the right to an inviolable. dwelling house, to bodily integrity, to be free.
He said in the next few weeks Ministers would arise from their slumber and proclaim themselves concerned and motivated by crime. "Do not read their lips - watch their feet. The perfumed poodles who voted soft for the past 30 months are about to start talking tough. Like toothless terriers, they are about to start yapping on crime, yapping about what they will do, not what they have not done."
