McDowell accused the Fine Gael and Labour leaders of hypocrisy and of scoring cheap political points following opposition criticisms of the government after another spate of gun murders, including the shooting dead of single mother Donna Cleary and criminal Se Bradley, both on Dublin's northside.

McDowell accused both Fine Gael and Labour of having caused many of the problems in relation to crime levels while they were part of the Rainbow Coalition. He pointed to their decisions to cancel the prison-building programme, to allow a decline in the number of serving gardai and to "support a policy that led to 16% of sentenced prisoners being on the streets".

At a PD function on Friday night, the minister said: "Yesterday morning in the Dail the capacity for hypocrisy of Fine Gael and their partners in crime, the Labour Party, was once again glaringly obvious.

Unsurprisingly, Fine Gael conjured up a further striking u-turn and discovered a new-found enthusiasm for mandatory sentences for gun crime.

"The party, now led by deputy Kenny, who yesterday obviously had been at the angry pills, again, and would have been better keeping his seat, strenuously opposed the introduction of mandatory sentences for drug dealers when they were originally proposed by my predecessor, John O'Donoghue."

Speaking about the murder of Donna Cleary, the justice minister said he had "no difficulty in being politically accountable for the criminal justice system. . . but what I find hard to swallow is the naked attempt by the leader of Fine Gael to grandstand and score cheap political points on this very serious issue, presiding as he does over a party which opposed the introduction of mandatory sentences for drug offences in the first instance. . . Deputy Kenny's ham-fisted amateur theatrics don't wash with me and I'm confident the Irish people aren't taken in by them either".

McDowell said that, during debate on the Criminal Justice Act 1999, the then Fine Gael spokesman on justice, Jim Higgins, described the proposed mandatory sentence as "unworkable".

"I've come to expect no more from the members of the Labour Party who routinely oppose every law and order measure I introduce, and I suppose I should at least welcome their consistency.

"Despite changing their brand name, their worn-out rhetoric hasn't changed one whit since 1998 when this measure was first debated in this House, " McDowell said.

"My record, on the other hand, on resourcing the criminal justice system and bringing forward meaningful, effective legislation is second to none. Since my appointment as minister, I've enacted 30 bills, with a further eight bills currently on the Dail and Seanad order papers, " McDowell insisted.

"We are fully on target to increase the strength of An Garda Siochana by 2,000 to bring the force to 14,000 by the end of this year as well as ensuring that the gardai have more resources at their disposal than ever before in their history. The garda budget for this year stands at 1.3bn, an increase of 40% since my appointment in 2002."

McDowell said the criminal justice bill contains a balanced package of measures designed to strengthen criminal law in several key areas.

"It is these measures, rather than Fine Gael theatrics and Labour Party bleating, which will strengthen the hand of An Garda Siochana in combating the scourge of gun crime and organised crime, " McDowell said.