The murder of an innocent young mother marked a watershed in Irish society and the guns culture had to be dealt with very severely, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said yesterday.
The Minister was speaking the day after Donna Cleary (22) died when gunmen fired shots into a house in Coolock, Dublin after being refused admission to a party.
"This is a horrific crime, an innocent young mother was shot by some savages who had a wanton disregard for life," Mr McDowell said.
Clearly if an automatic pistol was going to be used in circumstances such as these, we all had to reflect on what kind of society we had, he said.
That applied to everybody and not just the Minister for Justice. It applied to the judiciary as well. Possession of firearms were very serious offences and they must be dealt with in a way which made an example of any offender, he said.
It was very, very grave for the quality of everyone's life that some people could take someone else's life just because they were refused admission to a party, Mr McDowell said.
"I believe that everybody in Ireland, be they an elected politician, an ordinary citizen, a member of the judiciary, members of law enforcement agencies, anybody who reflects on what happened last night must realise this is a watershed point," the Minister said.
It had been said in the past that given the amount of firearms in circulation, eventually somebody who was totally innocent was going to get caught up in the crossfire, he said.
"Here it has arrived. I regard it now as a watershed point for all our social thinking on these matters."
The whole drugs issue in Irish society and the firearms that went with it would have to be dealt with very, very severely. There were not extenuating circumstances for possession of an automatic pistol and there were not extenuating circumstances for dealing in commercial quantities of drugs.
"Get-out clauses" for those found guilty of possession of firearms or drugs offences should only be used rarely, he said.
There were provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill for a gun amnesty for illegally held weapons to be taken out of circulation.
"We as a society have to signal at every level, legislative, executive and judiciary, our complete and total condemnation of this kind of activity," he said.
Society as a whole had fundamental choices to make in tackling the drugs and gun culture to ensure this did not happen again.
The Minister said he would do everything he could constitutionally, bearing in mind that the judicial function was separate from the executive function, to allow the Oireachtas to lay down very clear policy. He would say the vast, vast majority of judges, as well as everybody else, would share his view on this kind of wanton disregard for human life.
The Minister praised gardaí for the rapid progress they were making in the investigation and the success he said they had had to date in recovering illegal firearms but they needed the help of the community in tracing the firearms.