Minister for Justice Helen McEntee heads to the Garda College in Co Tipperary on Friday for a graduation ceremony which she hopes will offer visible evidence of the Government’s commitment to responding to concerns about crime and antisocial activity in Dublin.
Since an assault by a gang of youths on Talbot Street left US tourist Stephen Termini in hospital with what are feared to be life-changing injuries, media - old and new - have reverberated with the experiences and fears of people who find the streets of the capital increasingly threatening, lawless and downright dangerous.
The political pressure on McEntee has dialled up several notches, with Government backbenchers and colleagues ready to observe that it might be a better use of the Minister’s time to be ensuring there are sufficient numbers of gardaí on the streets rather than worrying about hate speech. She is fortunate that the Dáil is on its summer recess.
McEntee has responded in the only way she can: by promising more gardaí on the beat. Never mind that most people know that to reduce crime you have to – to coin a phrase – be tough on the causes of crime as well as on crime itself. Never mind that tackling the social breakdown that often leads to crime is a multilayered, long-term challenge. Never mind that the fear of crime tends to far outweigh the experience of crime.
Markets in Vienna or Christmas at The Shelbourne? 10 holiday escapes over the festive season
Ciara Mageean: ‘I just felt numb. It wasn’t even sadness, it was just emptiness’
Stealth sackings: why do employers fire staff for minor misdemeanours?
Carl and Gerty Cori: a Nobel Prizewinning husband and wife team
Never mind any of that. When people feel that crime is out of control, politicians react by seeking to put more gardaí on the streets. No voter ever complained to a politician that there were too many.
The danger – and it is a danger – for McEntee is that while she must take political responsibility for what happens on the streets, she has limited influence over how they are policed. Garda operations are a matter for Garda management. Even then, there are constraints. The garda ranks are in dispute with their bosses over rosters and there are threats of some sort of industrial action – of either the legal or illegal variety – in the air. The complaints of the representative organisations, rarely far from the airwaves, are especially ubiquitous at present.
McEntee is fortunate in that Garda numbers are likely to climb in the coming months as post-Covid recruitment and training works its way through the system. But she remains vulnerable to events on the streets. And she does not want street crime to be the story of the summer.
The current controversy has seen McEntee under political pressure for the first time since she vaulted into the front rank with her appointment as Minister for Justice when the Coalition was formed in the summer of 2020. She navigated an early controversy over the appointment of former attorney general Séamus Woulfe to the Supreme Court – and his subsequent attendance at the infamous Oireachtas golf society dinner – with a deft political touch and a bit of luck. She has since been spoken of, including by herself, as a possible future leader of Fine Gael. She has since taken two periods of maternity leave, returning from the second at the beginning of last month.
Brian Cowen once joked that the Department of Health was like Angola because the minister was in constant danger of having a landmine explode underneath his feet. But three who have occupied that post in the last quarter century have gone on to be taoiseach – Cowen, Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar. So health isn’t always the graveyard that people think it is.
The Department of Justice, on the other hand, maybe deserves the reputation more. It’s particularly dangerous for Fine Gael ministers, given the importance of the issue to that party. Nora Owen endured a torrid time in the role from 1995-1997, with her tenure blighted by the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin. That demonstrates the extent to which any minister for justice is only ever one high-profile crime away from a potential crisis.
The self-image of any party may be entirely at odds with either the reality or how it is perceived by others. But that does not diminish its importance for members and supporters. Fine Gael’s belief in itself as the party of law and order goes very deep; any future leadership contest would not look kindly on McEntee if she was seen to have wobbled her way through the justice portfolio.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has spoken about getting taxes down for business and “middle Ireland” as one of the principal reasons for Fine Gael to be in Government. He could say the same about the law and order agenda. In other words, the stakes for McEntee and for Fine Gael are pretty high.