If one could dare for a moment to imagine what goes on in John O'Donoghue's mind, it might be reasonable to assume that some part of it has been contemplating New York. It was from here that he borrowed the "zero tolerance" slogan that made him Minister for Justice.
He likes the slogan so much that even though he has redefined it beyond any recognisable meaning, he sticks to it like a barnacle on the keel of a sunken wreck. And he will, presumably, have noticed that the man from whom he borrowed it, the Republican mayor of New York, Rudi Giuliani, has just been re-elected for a second term, waltzing into office on his reputation as the greatest crime-fighter since Elliott Ness.
That reputation, it is now widely speculated, may yet take Giuliani all the way to the White House in 2000. As Fianna Fail discovered in the last election, crime - or at least a name for being tough on it - pays handsomely.
Crime in New York has fallen by 45 per cent over the last four years and murders have fallen by 60 per cent. And it shows. Returning to the city this year, and living in the place since the autumn, I've been struck by the absence of fear. In and around Manhattan, at least, the atmosphere has changed. Paranoia has been replaced by pleasantries. And this affects almost every aspect of life.
Take, for instance, the one that concerns me most frequently - the theatre. A few years ago, actors were reluctant to work on Broadway even though it is the most lucrative and prestigious echelon of the American theatre. The Broadway theatres are mostly around Times Square, and coming out into Times Square at midnight was not a good idea. The place was seedy, dangerous and depressing. Now, Broadway is back in business, at least in part because the Times Square area is safer and more pleasant.
And the effect is self-sustaining. There is a virtuous circle. If people think Times Square is less dangerous, more go there after dark. And if more go there, it is less dangerous.
This sense of relief translates into votes. People may know that Giuliani has benefited from long-term trends. Civic improvements instituted by his predecessors are bearing fruit. Demographics have decreed that there are fewer young men in the age groups most liable to commit serious crime. The sheer number of criminals in US prisons - 1 1/2 million people - means that, by definition, many of those inclined to crime are behind bars.
But somehow the meaningless but memorable phrase "zero tolerance" has stuck in people's heads and gets the credit for a general improvement in the quality of life.
And yet zero tolerance is not what this city practises. It tolerates appalling poverty. It puts up with a level of public despair that is mind-boggling. Sometimes, late at night, you can watch as the affluent capital of the developed world flips over and becomes the capital of a lost world of harrowing, hopeless deprivation.
The theatre-goers and diners retreat and their places are taken by bag people. The shop-fronts, park benches and subway stations fill up with an army of miserable, broken refugees. And they're not all drunks and junkies. If you look closely, you realise that many of these people are plain, ordinary citizens who have lost the battle for respectable survival in a pitiless city.
And when you've realised that, you ask yourself an obvious question: where are all these people during the day? How have they been kept out of sight? Does zero tolerance amount to much more than a way of policing them off the streets while the rest of us go about our business?
The much-vaunted crackdown on petty criminals - fare-dodgers, beggars, squeegee merchants - begins to look like a strange bargain: after 11 p.m., you can move in; before 11 p.m. we will keep you out of sight. And if zero tolerance is a way of keeping the city's own third world at bay, it also has the potential to bring the tinpot third world side of America to the surface. It allows this great democracy to flip over in the dark hours into a brutal dictatorship.
LAST August, a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, was taken into custody by the New York police. In the station, he was raped with a toilet plunger, which was then shoved into his mouth, breaking his teeth. While this was going on, he says, the police officers laughed about zero tolerance and "Giuliani time". He very nearly died.
And, this being America, he is now suing the state for $155 million. He probably won't get that much but he will almost certainly get a good slice of it. Louima's lawyers are also seeking extensive, if not yet specified, changes in the running of the New York Police Department. And, in a sense, zero tolerance itself will be on trial in both that civil case and in the criminal trials of the officers allegedly involved.
Yet the outcome of those trials will make little difference to the politics of crime. Ruth Messinger, Giuliani's Democratic opponent, tried to make police brutality an issue in the mayoral election. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, she still got nowhere. The truth is that when there is a tangible improvement in the quality of life for the law-abiding majority, most people don't really want to know about its dark side.
If it has been achieved at the cost of keeping the poor off the streets, if it is applied in a way that makes grotesque excesses extremely likely, so what?
The fact that they have no chance does not make the liberals wrong. It has to be remembered that most crime, everywhere, is directed at the poor and weak and happens in the areas where such people live. Often, the so-called liberal "dogooders" who actually work in ghettos are themselves much more familiar with the effects of crime than the hard-line floggers who rail at it from a distance.
It's the committed liberals - the religious activists, teachers, social workers - who walk the mean streets. They know what they're talking about when they say that real, long-term reductions in crime can't be sustained without fundamental economic and social changes which bridge the class (and race) divide.
But on an issue like this, being right is no excuse. Crime, and the fear of crime, so degrade a society, so unhinge reason, that complex arguments will be beaten every time by comforting slogans. In this sense, zero tolerance has become a way of not thinking about crime. It has come to mean lots of good things that it doesn't actually create - freedom from fear, a kinder, more pleasant society, a reclamation of public space.
And since it has acquired that meaning, politicians in search of votes are never going to let it go. It has entered the stream of public debate and will be hard to fish out again. Since it's going to be with us for a long time, the best we can do is to remember that if you want to implement zero tolerance in the New York sense, the best place to start is with a grotesquely divided society.