The right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty has been described as the 'golden thread' running through the web of English criminal law and a "fundamental postulate" of Irish criminal law which enjoys constitutional protection. Reflecting on the bail laws in the O'Callaghan case, Walsh J. described the presumption as a 'very real thing and not simply a procedural rule taking effect only at the trial'. The purpose of this book is to consider whether the reality matches the rhetoric surrounding this central precept of our criminal law and to consider its efficacy in the light of recent or proposed legislative innovations. Considerable space is devoted to the anti-crime package introduced by the government in the period of heightened concern about crime which followed the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin. Described by the Bar Council as "the most radical single package of alterations to Irish criminal law and procedure ever put together, " the effect of the package was an amen