Mr. Harry Maguire:

Members asked a number of questions.

I will start with the points raised by Deputy Crowe because they encapsulate the major challenge. Everything described by Deputy Crowe could be transported across the western world. One could take it from New York to Paris to Berlin to Manchester and to Cork because that is what is happening. As part of that conundrum, if one was a business person looking at how the criminal justice system has performed in all these areas, one would say "Let's get rid of the criminal justice system" because it has not performed at all. It has not tackled crime or dealt with attitudes and behaviour. In fact, things have got worse year in and year out.

A number of years ago we spoke about building a superprison in this end of the country. I do not know why this is still on the agenda with the financial situation. They have been building superprisons for years in the US and it is not working. The prison population has broken through the 2 million mark - this is nearly one third of the population of Ireland. California is nearly bankrupt and is looking at criminal justice and responses to it because it is not a very cost-effective system. What we do have is a very vested system - a system of interests and a very strong system that will protect itself rather than the citizens about which Deputy Crowe spoke. That is a major conundrum.

How do we turn those situations around? We do so by empowering communities. Concerned Parents against Drugs was a good project but there were problems associated with it. It involved probably just one constituency and did not interact with the statutory world. In the ten years since the beginning of Concerned Parents against Drugs up to the 1990s, the damage was done. If one visits the Monto district or inner-city Dublin, one sees how a catastrophe has happened in terms of drugs and the legacy it has left behind. This is why we are so strong on building those types of statutory relationships to try and prevent much of that happening.

How do we turn those communities around? We do this by embedding the type of value processes, systems and approaches we are talking about. However, it is also about law and order agendas and using the criminal justice system to really tackle some of the issues discussed by Deputy Crowe. Let us go for the jugular and follow the money instead of carrying out a drugs raid in Tallaght or Ballymun and chasing the €10 dealer. We constantly tell the police in Northern Ireland that they should stop looking for drugs and go looking for the money. Let us change the role models which young people on these estates are seeing. Let us turn that around.

Ms Watters spoke about aspirations and dreams so let us start and give these young people in these estates the potential to dream. One of the greatest orators and public speakers was the civil rights activist Martin Luther King. He used the term "I have a dream." The reason he did so was because everybody has dreams. We can all identify with that and like everybody else across the planet, we can revisit our dreams each night, change them and turn them into reality. He was speaking to the layperson. We also need to identify that as a key way of communicating in the communities Deputy Crowe is talking about because far too often, we do justice at or on those communities without engaging, empowering or including them. That all needs to end and we need to turn that around. If there is a drugs killing in Dublin or Belfast, the first thing the Garda or PSNI will do is make an appeal to the community and then involvement suddenly stops. We need to change the engagement, culture and society.

We were talking about this on the way down on the train. Many of us here would have a very similar upbringing in terms of our value systems, which are fed and driven from the Christian faith, be it Protestant or Catholic - I suppose there are many more faiths on the island of Ireland today - but all delivering the same value systems. That is no longer the case in the estates about which Deputy Crowe is speaking. The value systems are not coming from the church. They are coming from MTV and Playstation games and many of them are negative values. We need to re-introduce a value system to society. We are not saying this has to happen but we are suggesting restorative values are a way of doing that. It is a platform or vehicle by which one can transport these values to societies so that there is a sense of looking after one's neighbour so that the community does not become one of the closed door.

At some community meetings in Andersonstown, I am told that the dogs in the street know who the drug dealers are. I reply that, unfortunately, dogs cannot talk so they need to tell me or the police who they are. There is no point in saying that we have a drug problem if we know it is in No. 3 and that is what we need to start doing. We need to out drugs lords and drug dealers but, at the same time, deal with the consequences of it. In north and west Belfast, which has the highest suicide rate in western Europe, people constantly talk to me about the massive drug problem we have. We have 32 chemists at each end of the constituency so that is 64 chemists in north and west Belfast. That is a hard drug problem. Prescription drugs are being pumped out. That is something we could deal with very quickly.

The private sector should have a key interest in investing in communities and these approaches. This is because it would be productive in terms of the citizens we develop. My brother works in the GAA world and he tells me that he constantly works with young people who are not going to make it on to the senior team but if they are good citizens and individuals in the community, the club has done its job. The private sector needs to help us create that and play a role in it.

In terms of blackmail, extortion and gang activities, there is definitely a role for the private sector in terms of investment. We also need to see leadership from people in terms of dealing with these things. A number of dissident groups in Belfast have become involved in that activity and we are encouraging people to stand up to them. We advise our children from the age of three, four or five up to their early teens to stand up to bullies and that is what we are talking about here. We are talking about standing up to the bullies but doing it in a way that is positive for society. It is not about vigilantism, hanging, shooting and flogging. It is about changing lives and understanding that it is not a lifestyle choice for young people who get caught up in this world. It is sometimes the context and environment in which they have grown up.

In the areas where we operate, we have led on police engagement, to return the point made by Mr. Conor Murphy, MP. We have been very upfront about it because we know that is a key relationship and a game changer. One cannot shy away from it. As someone in our organisation once said "You can't be half pregnant." One either does or does not do it but we chose to do it and be fully pregnant. I think there is a child on the way because it has been productive.