Mr. Thomas McCarthy:

The Senator started off on the issue of perception. I will tell a short story. One day at a meeting in the area, a person who I will not name but who wears a professional hat said that a young person was in the middle of a field talking to another young person and the two must have been doing a drug deal. I know the two young people and neither of them is involved in drug dealing. Just because two young people were talking, they were assumed to be having a conversation about drug dealing. That is the perception that some people have. To get into a class argument, the person in question was from a middle class background and had experience in working in the community but probably did not have experience of living in or coming from that type of community. That is just one example.

The Senator also mentioned police interaction. Police are in our area quite often. At certain times when they get a load of overtime, there are more police in the area than at other times. For a short period, a couple of things happen. First, if there is any antisocial behaviour going on, it reduces a little. However, what happens when gardaí come into the area is that all young people are tarred with the same brush. As a result, young people who are not involved in antisocial behaviour are also targeted by these gardaí and their interactions with them can be quite negative, although that is not always the case. From a very young age, the first interaction of young people with the Garda can be terrible. We have been told countless stories by young people about how they have been mistreated, brutalised, abused, ridiculed and physically attacked by gardaí. Such behaviour would get me fired from my job but is acceptable when a garda does it. We find it unacceptable in this youth service. That is a short description-----