A 30-point national campaign to "get tough on louts" involved in anti-social behaviour was launched in Dublin yesterday by Fine Gael.
Measures include curfews, on-the-spot fines of up to €100 and making parents responsible where under-18s are involved, with social welfare deductions where necessary.
The party also wants to establish community-based forums - a lower level "court" - where adjudicators, not necessarily with a legal background, would preside and where an offender would repair damage done, or make compensation and express remorse.
Fine Gael was "standing up" with the community against "loutish behaviour and mindless vandalism", said party leader Enda Kenny, who launched the campaign at the Blue Leaf Pembroke Gallery, where an exhibition of photographs depicting anti-social behaviour was displayed.
Photographs from it are part of a planned billboard campaign, "Ireland, a night in the Life".
The party has also set up a website, www.safestreets.ie, to promote its ideas and get a public response and plans 100 public meetings across all constituencies to build a major debate about anti-social behaviour.
The campaign comes ahead of plans by the Minister for Justice to introduce anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) this year, and follows Labour's anti-social behaviour discussion document launch last week.
Labour supports, as a last resort, the introduction of ASBOs which direct an offender to desist from specific anti-social acts.
Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Jim O'Keeffe, said his party "hasn't gone cold on anti-social behaviour orders but on its own it just scratches the surface".
He said since its introduction in Britain in 1999, some 4,000 orders had been issued of which one-third were breached.
Such orders were only a minor part of Fine Gael's whole campaign, which included a lot of new measures, he added.
Initial estimates of the cost of this campaign are €25 million, but Mr O'Keeffe said that after the public discussions and workshops, he would produce a final paper at the end of the year. To cost it they needed reliable statistics on the extent of this behaviour.
He believed that a Minister of State at the Taoiseach's department should be appointed, with responsibility for the co-ordination of the proposals which also include implementing the remaining provisions of the Children's Act, expanding the Probation and Welfare Service and an overhaul of Garda rostering.
He also called for "half-way houses" with strict regulations for anti-social tenants threatened with eviction.
"I don't believe in reinventing the wheel but adopting best practice from other countries, such as the idea of mentoring from Northern Ireland and repair orders from New York." The latter will require owners of dilapidated and vandalised properties to repair any vandalism in public view within one week.
Increasing Garda powers to curb loitering and intimidation, banning the sale of spray paint to under-18s, increased fines for sale of alcohol to under-18s, banning sales of alcopops in off-licences and a rolling out of the drugs court across the State are also part of the proposals.
