10 years ago this week Fianna Fail staged an election stunt that was to have a significant bearing on the 1997 Election 2 weeks later. They got John Timoney over from the USA to tell the Irish people about Zero Tolerance, the anti- crime strategy he had helped pioneer in New York, with considerable success.

Bertie Ahern and John O'Donoghue stood with Mr Timoney at a FF press Conference and announced Zero Tolerance as the main item on their crime manifesto. The notion caught on even though the Garda Commissioner at the time poured cold water on the whole idea as a gimmick rater than an effective policy. FF sold the idea to voters who were fed up with the rise in violent crime and the apparent ineffectiveness of legal measures to stamp it out.

FF won a lot of electoral kudos for its committment to Zero Tolerance as a strategy and it was a key element its its success at the polls soon after.

Now 10 years on voters have the right to ask just what results this strategy has delivered. Now we know it was just an election stunt and that FF had not thought out a policy to make it work. Today the crime situation is just as bad as in 1997. The gangs are as strong , if not actually stronger.Each year brings its own spate of gang wars and murders. In one notorious case a wholly innocent young man Anthony Campbell was killed. So was a young woman Donna Cleary.Both of these happened in the last year.

Zero tolerance has failed because it was never more than a cyncial vote gathering exercise. Today Fianna Fail deflect all criticism of the Government's crime record by blaming it all on Michael McDowell and his appalling record in Justice. The voters will recognise this as another cynical manouevre , just as hollow as the original Zero Tolerance ploy of 10 years ago.

On Thursday I believe the People of Ireland will deliver a damning verdict on the past decade of an ineffective crime policy by voting its principal architects Bertie Ahern and John O'Donoghue out of Office.