Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Commissioner Harris for coming in. With regard to the report, I want to touch on an angle that has not been touched on. We are aware of the fact juvenile liaison officers are doing some good work around the country steering young people away from crime. However, this controversy has probably thrown light on the young people who are falling through the cracks, in particular those who are deemed unsuitable for the programme and, thus, left out of it. There seems to be a large number of such people, with 55,500 deemed unsuitable for the diversion programme, and the figure of 7,894 came out of that.

There is wide acceptance that these people need our help most, although I am not saying it is easy to make it happen. In the past few days I was talking to a guy involved in the intervention and prevention programme in Ballyogan, which I believe is doing great work with young people, some of whom are very troubled. The expression he used was that the adults are prepared to get "down and dirty" and work with the kids, listen to them and bring them under their wing, see what the kids are interested in, and steer them away from a life of crime, with many of them having come from troubled backgrounds. Is there potential for An Garda Síochána to work with a large cohort of these 55,000 young people who are not deemed suitable at the moment?