Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal North East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Commissioner for coming in today.

Criminal gangs thrive on economic disadvantage, particularly in urban communities. There is an intergenerational conveyor belt of people who drift into petty crime and eventually work their way into these gangs. In parts of Dublin and Limerick whole communities have been terrorised by a handful of individuals.

What are the Commissioner's views on the joined-up multi-agency approach? When the Garda is successful in convicting some of these individuals they go to prison, where they can often be as great a threat as they were on the outside because their networks and systems of communication are still in place. Has the Garda looked at other multi-agency models? Last week, this committee looked at the penal reform system in Finland to see if we could apply that model to break up the culture of criminal activity organised from prison.

With regard to the communities, I see three elements. They are the prison service, the Garda Síochána and the third consists in the HSE and Department of Education and Skills, which have a role with regard to drugs and community support for young people. What is the Commissioner's sense of how those elements can work together to address the causes of crime and stop it getting to the stage where the Garda has to deploy considerable resources to tackle it?