If elected to government, Fianna Fail promise to provide 2,000 new prison places. And no, not by ordering the immediate release of the members of their party currently serving jail terms for financial irregularity.
What Fianna Fail say is that they will build additional spaces. At least enough to incarcerate 2,000 felons who, they claim, are today scandalously free to roam the streets , roaming the streets being the classic Fianna Fail idea of what key figures in the Irish underworld do when they re not actively absorbed in crime breakage ( Hey, lads, that gold bullion heist was a doddle, even if I did have to dust off those four witnesses with the Heckler. Let s celebrate by rambling up Earlsfort Terrace, meandering over towards historic Merrion Row, and then strolling around the leafy grandeur of St. Stephen s Green! ).
The extra chokey capacity will be essential because a Fianna Fail administration will compel the Gardam to implement a policy of Zero Tolerance. According to John O Donoghue, the FF spokesperson on Justice and a man who wears his fiery abhorrence of wrongdoers in the very complexion of his face, there is no such thing as an insignificant crime; the tolerance of small offences creates a climate wherein major offences flourish. A crackdown on those who commit even the tiniest misdemeanours will therefore, he argues, reinforce the rule of law in our nation from the bottom up.
Of course, in recent months, rabid twaddle about tackling the scourge of crime has become the political soup du jour. It s what Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats in particular are force-feeding the voracious idiot of election fever. They want to be seen as fearless marshals on white stallions, eager to ride in at dawn and clean up this doggone town. But we must not allow ourselves to become too cynical about these Wyatt Twerps.
For every case that I can cite of an opposition TD displaying all the common sense and perception of a KP Hula Hoop, another commentator could point to an instance of an opposition TD rising to the intellectual level of a more highly developed form of potato snack, such as a sour cream n onion Pringle or a Frisp.
So, is the Zero Tolerance palaver the kind of nonsense that comes in a squat packet or a tall tube? How would Zero Tolerance work in practice, in a typical Irish community such as, say, Kerry, the home patch of John O Donoghue himself?
The mountains and cliffs of Kerry may be beautiful to look at during a summer holiday but they make for a harsh and inclement home. The many bachelor farmers whose paltry holdings dot these rugged crags lead lonely and often cheerless lives, desperately eking out an existence in the teeth of hostile elements. They would have to be among the first to be arrested under a Zero Tolerance regime.
Every weekend, dozens of these dangerous criminals recklessly climb behind the wheels of lethal killing machines such as woodframed Morris Minors and heirloom Anglias, and then hurtle through the night at extraordinary speeds, clocking up mileages per hour frequently well in excess of single figures.
Most of those vehicles would instantly fail an MOT test, many of them are not insured, few are taxed. Their owners may only take them out on what the rest of civilised Europe would consider dirt tracks but the Road Traffic Acts are the Road Traffic Acts. Zero Tolerance. Take these fiends off the calendar. Call in their debt to society. Lock em up and throw away the key.
Beer use among Kerry farmers in isolated areas is notoriously widespread. Some are so chronically addicted that they will drive the 25 miles to their local pub as often as once a week. There, they will down maybe four whole pints of Guinness before driving the 25 miles back again. The majority of these stoutheads are so accustomed to this wanton lifestyle that they can actually drive perfectly safely in this condition, but that s not the point.
Strictly speaking (and it s a speech pattern that s now the Fianna Fail vernacular), they are over the limit. That s all that matters. Zero Tolerance. As Minister for Justice, John O Donoghue will have these loathsome evil-doers hunted down, to the ends of the Earth if needs be. Alternatively, he could just find out where they live by simply asking his constituency party colleague, Jackie Healy Rae, who will, by then, be serving a custodial sentence on Spike Island.
Having slicked his once proudly traditionalist mane into an avant-garde sculpture to indicate the depth of his concern, Jackie went on The Late Late Show some years ago and made some very blunt comments about what he claims is the unworkability of the drink-driving legislation in regions such as remotest Kerry. He has clearly aided and abetted others in their flouting of the law, and he a councillor. Zero Tolerance. Let s see how he likes being coiffured by a prison barber. If only we had the death penalty in this country.
The Rose Of Tralee and Puck Fair will provide unique challenges for the Zero Tolerance crusade. It will, for example, be fascinating to observe how Gardam impose the regulations prohibiting drunk and disorderly behaviour at festivals which celebrate the precise laboratory conditions necessary to nurture drunk and disorderly behaviour.
Large, highly-mobile assault teams armed with American army flame-throwers will be required if even a single public order ordinance is to be enforced, especially if it s the one forbidding the deployment of exposed penises as conducting batons during the RTE Proms concert in the Tralee dome.
Imagine, too, the chaos that will ensue when the constabulary try to lay down the law in Kilorglin. They ll barely have baton-charged and tear-gassed the Puck Fair buskers, jugglers and pavement artists when it ll be time to turn the water cannon on the ladies from the Gougane Barra ICA tour whose minibus is pumping out the fabulous music of Neil Diamond without a royalties licence. Incidentally, what is the statutory situation regarding the suspension of a goat on a wooden platform above the main street?
Nobody wishes to upset Mr. O Donoghue more than he is already, but 2,000 new prison places is merely going to be a drop in the ocean if Zero Tolerance is to be effectively realised. The Irish tourist industry cannot function without minor legal transgressions; pubs that stay open a few minutes later, mild breaches of the peace, obstructions of the highway, poitmn making, unauthorised street trading, unsanctioned naturism et, as they say on the Blasket Islands, al. You can t offer a genuine Ciad Mmle Failte unless you also turn Cead Mmle blind eyes.
This is why John O Donoghue s primary duty as Minister for Justice will be to arrange for the immediate internment of everyone who earns a wage from tourism and its evil traffic in human misery. This may be where space begins to become a problem. To accommodate the culprits and crooks from Kerry alone, he ll require a detention facility the size of, well, Kerry alone.
Yeah, you re right, I m just being silly now. This is never gonna happen. Most of the people who work in tourism don t earn anything that even comes close to a wage. More to the point, John O Donoghue never envisaged Zero Tolerance being introduced in Kerry.
When he outlined his plans for the stamping-out of petty crime, O Donoghue insisted that it would be a comprehensive nationwide campaign, by which he specifically meant it would be rigorously restricted to Dublin only. That s where all the criminals live, right?
Like most of those who trade in the Fianna Fail marketplace, John O Donoghue is a member of a GAA club. His idea of Zero Tolerance does not extend to the encircling of football and hurling parks with hundreds of riot cops every Sunday afternoon, even though GAA games involve a certain amount of violent crime in the same way that the Sahara involves a certain amount of sand. Indeed, the standard definition of borderline psychotics in most modern mental health textbooks now reads: Those guys who stand on the edge of the pitch at GAA matches roaring abuse at everyone.
Throw a dart at the phonebook and you ll find someone who has broken a law. Citizens who aren t listed in the phonebook may insist that this is because they don t have a phone but what are they really trying to hide?
Essentially, the doctrine of Zero Tolerance submits that the liberty of the Irish people can best be guaranteed by imprisoning as many of them as possible. It s an attempt to confer respectability on a lynchmob by calling it a necktie party. As a philosophy, it is absurd, dangerous and deceitful but also rhetorically seductive. It s a crackpipe for the self-righteous and they ll be dragging on it like suckling babies between now and polling day.
The smug sectors of the community who must loudly extol the virtues of Zero Tolerance know that it will never be applied to them. In Ireland, middle-class and rural misdemeanours will continue to be accorded Absolute Tolerance. When carried out on the streets, the Zero Tolerance policy will solely and wholly be used as a stick with which to beat the most weak and pitiable individuals, drug addicts, the homeless, the urban destitute, juvenile runaways and anyone else too powerless to fight back.
The smart folk in Fianna Fail know that it will only make the crime situation in this country worse. But, hey, they ll burn that bridge when they come to it.
On the other hand, I could be wrong. Maybe there are no smart folk left in Fianna Fail. Perhaps John O Donoghue is deadly serious. If so, then I would trouble him to allow me make a modest proposal.
Zero Tolerance will only work if the overcrowding of penitentiaries in the capital can be dealt with. Consequently, I suggest that we merge the Dublin prison service with the Dublin bus service. Think about it. Buses are filled with miscreants and outlaws anyway; fare dodgers, people who smoke and throw litter, all of those go-boys who sit on the back seats and are obviously up to no good. Drug dealers, burglars and other forms of working-class scum also use the buses regularly.
So, when they step onboard willingly, why not keep them there? For five, 10, 20 years. Life without remission, even. Bus drivers could just keep driving around and around the city, picking up further desperadoes as they go.
Brilliant, isn t it? Oh sure, we may occasionally lock up the odd innocent passenger by mistake, but we can live with that. It ll be their own fault for consorting with known criminals. n