The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has said he wants to incorporate EU and UN definitions of a criminal organisation into Irish law. Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter, reports
The measure is seen as the first move in a new attempt to target up to 17 criminal gangs operating in the State. The Government is also planning to make membership of an organised criminal gang a specific offence as part of a new range of measures to strengthen the powers of the Garda.
The Minister's spokesman last night denied a claim by Fine Gael that he had reversed previous opposition to criminalising membership of gangs. Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr John Deasy, said Mr McDowell had spoken against such a measure in the Dáil.
The Minister's spokesman said he had spoken against incorporating an offence of gang membership into the Offences Against the State Act, which covers paramilitarism.
Earlier, Mr McDowell outlined his proposals to an Oireachtas Committee where the Garda Commissioner, Mr Noel Conroy, said dissident republicans were involved in smuggling; the provision of arms to criminals and in extortion from drug dealers and traffickers.
Mr McDowell said he was examining a provision in Canadian law which makes it an offence to knowingly participate in or contribute to the activities of a criminal organisation. He made a distinction between ad hoc gangs, which come together to carry out one crime, and organised groups which had structures akin to the Mafia and Chinese triads. Mr McDowell also wanted to widen the Garda's powers of arrest to enable it to stop those conspiring to plan a criminal act, or those attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He is considering giving the Garda the power to draw inferences from the possession of certain documents, or boiler suits and disguises. "I have known of situations where a person was found with detailed drawings of another person's home and routes used by the person to and from his place of work," Mr McDowell said. It was clear, he said, that the criminals were planning a kidnapping.
The Minister also wants to extend the powers of the District Court to issue general search orders to the Garda and empower senior gardaí to issue 24-hour search warrants in urgent cases. Such measures go further than those contained in the heads of the Criminal Justice Bill agreed last summer by the Government. They also include a proposal to establish a national DNA databank, a plan already under consideration by the Law Reform Commission.
Mr McDowell said DNA samples should be held for more than 12 months. He was "wholly unconvinced" by arguments which said that would infringe civil liberties.