The scourge of violent crime has blown up as a major election issue in the wake of the horrific murder of Keane Mulready-Woods.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was forced to defend Fine Gael’s reputation as “the party of law and order” amid a spate of vicious incidents around the country.

Mr Varadkar’s remarks came as he visited the 17-year-old’s home town of Drogheda, expressing his revulsion at the murder and mutilation and vowing the perpetrators would be put “behind bars”.

Gardaí were yesterday continuing to search for the teen’s mutilated torso and carried out raids on the fortified compound of gang boss Cornelius Price, in Gormanston, Co Meath.

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Price – a close associate of Drogheda gang boss Owen Maguire – is feuding with the 35-year-old north Dublin criminal who is the chief suspect in the murder of Keane.

No arrests were made and “nothing of major evidential value” was seized, according to senior sources.

Elsewhere, 20-year-old student Cameron Blair was stabbed to death at a house party in Cork city on Thursday.

And there was further violence as two men were left seriously injured after a shooting in the St Margaret’s area of north county Dublin.

Fianna Fáil was scathing of Fine Gael’s record, with Jim O’Callaghan accusing Mr Varadkar’s party of doing “virtually nothing” to tackle gang crime over the last nine years.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan last night insisted: “We are going to defeat these violent, thuggish criminals.”

He hit back at Fianna Fáil, accusing the rival party of putting forward “back of the envelope” solutions.

He said Fine Gael had put armed support units in every Garda region and recruited 3,000 officers in five years.

The brutal murder of Keane has dominated the headlines and left the country and community in Drogheda deeply shocked.

Local Labour Party candidate Ged Nash last night claimed Mr Varadkar’s insistence that Fine Gael is the party of law and order “will come as a sick joke to the people of Drogheda”.

He said he had been calling for a multi-agency approach to gang crime for 18 months and claimed it was only now Mr Varadkar and Mr Flanagan had been persuaded of the need to do this.

In the town with Mr Flanagan yesterday, Mr Varadkar wanted to assure the community the Government was “100pc behind them”.

He pledged: “We’re going to get these people behind bars and we’re going to make this town safe.”

He appealed to anyone with information to come forward.

Mr Varadkar defended his party’s record, saying Fine Gael had restored Garda recruitment after the economic crash and the organisation’s €1.9m budget was higher than ever before.

In Dublin, Mr O’Callaghan said 10 people were murdered as a result of gang crime last year and claimed Fine Gael had “done virtually nothing to confront the threat”.

He promised anti-gang legislation with “more teeth” and to increase the number of gardaí from 14,100 to 16,000.

Mr O’Callaghan suggested that, as in cases involving IRA membership, the evidence of a chief superintendent should be admissible evidence in a Special Criminal Court involving gang members.

Mr Flanagan said the advice from the gardaí and justice officials was that this was not a solution as criminal gangs were unlikely to have permanent organisational structures.

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