In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist outrage in London, which was remembered yesterday during two minutes of silence in Britain and across the European Union, including Ireland, reactions of horror, grief and anger were interlaced with official promises of tough legislative action to make such atrocities less likely in the future.
In due course, the government of the United Kingdom will take such action as it sees fit. Pan-European measures will also be agreed and implemented. Here Justice Minister Michael McDowell was quick to say that if an identity card system were to be introduced in the UK, something similar would have to follow in this jurisdiction, because of the existing common travel area in which no passports are required between the Republic of Ireland, Britain and Northern Ireland.
A week on from the train and bus bombings in which 53 people died through a combination of suicide and mass murder, the outrage has lost little of its capacity to shock. In the past few days, a debate has begun in Britain about the nature of multiculturalism and also about the hate-filled strain of Islam preached by a minority of Muslim community leaders and scholars, usually in the context of prayer or religious teaching, to warp and inspire young men to commit acts of mass murder. In Ireland we should not rush to judgment about these issues, but should listen to the debate, learn from it and adapt our rapidly changing society as appropriate.
We should be similarly cautious but not unwilling to change when it comes to legislative responses. It is reported that despite his initial comments on identity cards, Mr McDowell is not attracted to the idea - and that neither are many of his Cabinet colleagues - fearing unwarranted intrusion into people's private lives and potential damage to relations between the Garda and the community.
The introduction of identity cards could be accepted if there is reasonable cause to believe they could prevent such atrocities as the London bombings. But they should be rigorously examined to test their potential effectiveness. A public services card could diminish bureaucracy and facilitate interaction with State agencies, but what information should it contain and at what cost to established civil liberties? And how would such measures be applied in a society as open as Ireland's now is? Tourist and business travellers at over five million per annum subtantially outnumber the home population. Immigrant workers have swelled the workforce by several hundreds of thousands, while those seeking asylum would also have to be covered by any system of identity cards. It would have to be co-ordinated not only with the UK but within the EU as well. And it is not clear that a UK system would necessarily have to be replicated here to safeguard the common travel area, given the openness between these islands. It is difficult to see how a system of identity cards would have made a difference had the four London bombers been carrying them. If so, why go ahead with it?