Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted I made it to the meeting. I did not believe I would. I had a dental appointment this morning, so I listened to the opening statements in the car on the way here.

I welcome the witnesses from the ISPCC and Barnardos. We have heard a great deal about how children's lives have been adversely affected through their schools being closed and their clubs and sports not being available to them. We all saw how young people were criticised for hanging out in groups during the lockdown when no one was meant to be in a group of more than two people. I have spoken to community gardaí in my area and others who are involved in meeting children. It is easy to tell children to disperse and go home, but that is not an easy thing for them to do when home is not a safe space. That is a major factor we saw.

I will touch on a matter that was not covered in the opening statements but about which I spoke in the Dáil last night, and I wonder whether the witnesses have had experience of it. We are seeing people as young as ten years of age being groomed by older criminals into criminality in terms of drug use, drug crime and transporting money. There has been a visible increase in the number of young people experimenting with drug use. For example, one can see discarded nitrous oxide or laughing gas canisters, which are known as silver bullets, when walking around my area. Their increase during the pandemic was noticeable to everyone. Have the two organisations experience of young people being groomed into criminality and experimenting with drug use and how do they deal with these issues when presented to them?