Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We are having a very good debate on young people and the strategy around justice and so forth. Young people are sometimes maligned. They can be marginalised by society so it is important we give confidence and credit to their age group. The most important thing, if young people engage in activity they should not engage in, is to divert them away from the criminal justice system. The Garda diversion projects are very good. I have first-hand experience of such a project. It is a very good project that takes people away from things they should not be doing. We do not want young people getting into a career of criminality. There are also very good initiatives, such as late-night football leagues. They are a good tool for engaging young people in working-class communities.

I will touch on a number of matters. We cannot talk about youth work without talking about the cuts that happened 15 years ago due to austerity. Funding of youth work throughout the State has been catching up and is still catching up. If there is no funding for engaging with young people, we will then have voids and resource issues.

My substantial contribution will be on the document, Report on the Consultations with Young People for the Citizens Assembly on Drug Use. It outlines a number of very important issues that young people are thinking about and want to engage with. It raises a number of very important issues regarding how young people are affected by drug use or the harms caused by drugs and so forth. As I said, my first-hand experience is that when young people engage with criminal gangs, they go down a very dark cul-de-sac. Some very unscrupulous people will use young people for drug dealing and so forth. The main points outlined in the document are around treatment and support. A key issue is that of nonjudgmental harm reduction, in addition to legal reform, educational awareness and aspects of what drugs do to individual young people and their communities and families. This document is very important and way ahead of Government policy on how we deal with people in communities that have been blighted by drug use. The citizens' assembly document is very important in the whole context of drug use in this country. Young people are deeply affected, regardless of whether they take drugs, by the peer group through which drugs are in their community. I hope people get a chance to read this document, even if it is only the first six or seven pages. It gives an insight into how young people are thinking and what their outlook on this issue is, when they are sometimes forgotten about.

The main thing is we have to look after our young people. We have to big them up. We do not need to malign them. There are sometimes all sorts of bad vibes on social media that can really play on people's minds, especially young people's minds, such as their association with anti-social behaviour. I hate that label. I hate it with a passion that young people are associated with anti-social behaviour just because they hang around corners. We all hung around corners. We all did that, but there is then a label that young people are engaged in anti-social behaviour. If young people hear that, what does it do to somebody's thinking? We have to be very careful about terminology and how we treat and listen to young people. It is very important that we listen to young people because, again, their voices are sometimes not heard. The contribution and say of the Citizens' Assembly on Drug Use outlined in this document are very important in respect of the recommendation we will get at the end of the year.

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