THE GOVERNMENT has taken no action whatsoever on 41 of the commitments it made in the justice area, the Labour Party claimed yesterday.
Labour justice spokesman Pat Rabbitte yesterday said he had carried out an analysis of the programme for government (PfG) and found very few commitments implemented on prisons, anti-social behaviour, the Garda, drugs, organised crime and sentencing.
"A study of replies to a series of written parliamentary questions submitted prior to the recess have identified 41 specific commitments on which no action yet appears to have been taken," he said.
Areas not yet addressed by Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern included measures to tackle gangland crime and promises to criminalise the practice of "happy slapping", he said.
Mr Rabbitte contended that a wide range of excuses was given in respect of inaction and further claimed that it appeared no real consideration was given to the legal or constitutional implications of various commitments before they were included in the programme.
"One particular commitment promised to introduce legislation that would allow the gardaí to issue 'restriction orders' which would be used in emergency situations to restrict named persons from travelling to or from certain places for defined periods of time.
"In his reply to the question on this particular issue, the Minister says that it 'gives rise to highly sensitive constitutional issues which will require careful scrutiny'. However, one might have thought that such careful scrutiny would have been undertaken before such a commitment was made," he said.
A spokeswoman at the Department of Justice yesterday dismissed Mr Rabbitte's argument as unreasonable.
"The PfG sets out clearly what the department's commitment is for five years, not 15 months.
"It is unreasonable for Deputy Rabbitte to imply failure when the Government has spent only 15 months in office."
