Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the fantastic work they are doing on the front line. I love the vision for community policing. My gut tells me that policing services have a long way to go. The area that I am interested and work in and on which Dr. Connolly touched is addiction. I have often worked with families with loved ones who had broken into houses to feed their addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs or gambling. I would like to hear from the witnesses about that. I will not use the word "addiction" because we often treat that as another issue. We are talking about society in general. What is the role of alcohol harm and drugs, including for people who are dependent on drugs and those who have binge weekends? What is the impact of that on fights? I refer to fighting, accidents that happen, sexual abuse and domestic violence. When we look at crime, including the serious issue of rural crime, what drives people to commit crime in general and what role do alcohol, drugs and gambling play in that?

Dr. Connolly spoke about respect and the policing service. The policing service deal with huge trauma every day. It works on the front line all the time. A report was done recently on trauma and the mental health of gardaí. There are no supports provided for gardaí in that respect. All of that trauma comes back to addiction and the role it plays. I work with families who have somebody they love with an addiction problem. They live with trauma too because they are watching their loved one go down the route of self-destruction. They are living with the chaos and crisis this causes. I am bringing this to the policing service and community policing. From my experience of working with these families, if one gives them the tools to cope with this in a way that does not traumatise them or cause them to burn out and enables them to treat their family member with respect while establishing strong boundaries and measures that prevent him or her from creating chaos, the results are unbelievable.

Coming back to community service, I have worked with many different families. I worked with a grandfather, for example, who was not an old grandfather. He was relatively young, in his late 50s. He was rearing his grandson and they were both living in a house together. This young lad started to get into drugs of some kind. He was not taking them every day but he started to get violent. It was pretty scary and the grandfather did not know what to do. He did not want to go to the police because this was his lovely grandson. He did, however, connect with the local community garda with our help. He brought the community garda into his home and sat the young lad down. The community garda talked to the young lad at length about the impact his behaviour was having and said that the next time it happened, he would be arrested if there was violence. Immediately there was a shift with the young lad and, thankfully, through a lot of interagency work, and this was only this one young lad, with the help of the community garda, and with the addiction services really supporting the grandfather, that young lad is now in recovery. This is just a small example of how such interagency work can work well.

I have another example of a sister who was very concerned about her niece. She was only ten and was living in an environment of addiction. Again, the sister went to the community garda, who was fantastic. The community garda gave her support. Unfortunately, they could not do anything for the ten year old child, which was devastating, but at least there were some supports there.

I listen to "Today with Sean O'Rourke", on which Paddy O'Gorman has a segment in which he meets people outside the courts. Almost 95% of the people he talks to are before the courts for alcohol, drugs or gambling related cases. I am trying to ask the witnesses, in their experience in the work they all do, how high a percentage of cases are alcohol, drugs or gambling related. I hear what Mr. Garvey is saying, that this must come from the top when it comes to the Garda. District policing only accounts for 10% of policing overall. That is pretty shocking when one thinks of what community gardaí could do, bearing in mind that we must be conscious of the fact that many of the gardaí are burned out from dealing with crises all the time. I loved what Ms Meally said about the community and understanding roles and responsibilities. Again, this goes back not only to the training of gardaí but also to supports for them and having that support there for them when there is a crisis. The overall approach could be life-changing for the police force in such a positive way if it came from the top, instead of this kind of zero tolerance and lack of compassion and lack of empathy.

I will stop soon. This is just an area I am particularly passionate about. I have worked in the prison services and seen women in particular who have entered prison because of crime related to drugs or alcohol - probably more alcohol than drugs. They act out in ways they would never act out if it were not for substance misuse. When one works in that field and deals with people in a compassionate, respectful way, the results are phenomenal and off the Richter scale. All of a sudden they start to feel good about themselves, even though they have acted out in ways that have resulted in their ending up in prison. They start to feel good about themselves and shame starts to disappear. They start to realise that there may be hope. In the witnesses' experience, what role do alcohol, drugs and gambling play in crime? How high is the percentage? Has there been any research done on this?