Last year was the bloodiest and most violent in the history of the State, it was claimed in the Dáil during a special debate on tackling crime.
It was also alleged that the Garda civilianisation programme had completely failed, and that the authorities were resistant to proper community policing.
During a five-hour debate, agreed in the wake of the shooting last week of a traffic garda, Fine Gael's justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said there were 66 homicides last year, one death every five days, and it was "the bloodiest and most violent in the history of the State".
Serious assaults had increased to 10 violent attacks a day, and since 2002 more than 500,000 serious crimes had been committed. Armed robbery increased by 70 per cent, and gun-related crime by 50 per cent.
The Laois-Offaly TD said anyone handling a gun illegally should be given a minimum five-year sentence. He said "mandatory sentencing in the criminal justice system must mean exactly that, particularly in the area of drug crime and firearms offences. All too often this has not been the approach adopted in the courts."
Mr Flanagan also highlighted a report in the Garda Review that whether a garda is equipped with a digital radio in the centre of Dublin "depends on which side of the river Liffey they are standing on because communications between the north and south sides of the city are not possible".
Labour's justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte claimed the Garda's civilianisation programme "has been a complete failure".
He said a recent report showed "not a single garda was taken from behind a desk and put into the community. Civilianisation has become the recruitment of additional civilians as distinct from putting gardaí tied up in pen-pushing duties into the community."
He questioned why there was "such official resistance to proper community policing".
The evidence was that genuine community policing had had considerable success but "the official culture regards community policing as an add-on and concession to community and public pressure".
The drugs trade is the "single biggest influence on crime", according to Sinn Féin's justice spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh.
Praising the Garda and customs officers for recent drugs seizures, he said in those seizures "weapons of every calibre were recovered". The weapons entering the country with drugs shipments "are sufficient to prosecute the war that drug barons have been declaring on society".
Peter Power (FF, Limerick East) said society was dealing with an "entirely new breed of ruthless and sophisticated criminal". A parallel "can be drawn between this type of criminal activity and that practised by so-called republican paramilitary groups in the past whereby these criminals' respect for the State is non-existent and their fear of the State can often be non-existent".
