James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the strategy in this regard, the first priority is to get full national coverage. Only last week, we approved the advertisement for youth diversion projects in areas that remain to be covered, including parts of counties Mayo, Cavan and Tipperary. The name of the fourth county escapes me for the moment. We are working on full national coverage. We have also been increasing the allocation of funding to provide family support workers and early intervention workers. This concerns 8- to 11-year-olds. They do not need to be referred by the justice system but can be identified through Tusla or other agencies, as well as our own.

We have also now started the consultation around 18- to 24-year-olds. Most youth services extend to 24-year-olds. We must, of course, be careful. What will work for a 15-year-old will not necessarily work for a 22-year-old. Equally, one 20-year-old can be going on 12, in respect of mentality, while another heads up a serious crew in an organisation. We must have this extensive consultation in order to see what parts of the youth service can be extended, which parts it is appropriate to extend and those parts we should not extend. In addition, our youth workers will have to be trained differently, depending on who they are going to be dealing with.

We also have a research programme, Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice, REPPP, in the University of Limerick. This is headed up by Professor Sean Redmond. The project has won several awards. We are heading towards having a world-class youth justice service. Increasingly, we are getting international interest from other countries' youth services that are interested in seeing what we are doing, how we are doing it and why we are doing it. There is still much we can learn from others as well.

The whole purpose of these programmes is to divert people away from criminal activities. In the cases of many young people who end up on the pathway to criminal activity, the earlier it is possible to intervene, the more we can direct them away from that course. Often, a great deal of criminal activity among young people is trauma-informed. They may be coming from chaotic family backgrounds. Sometimes parents want to do their very best. We find sometimes, especially in Dublin, that the parents are good parents but they are the children of drug addicts themselves and may not have been taught the skills they need to undertake appropriate parenting. This is where the family support aspect comes in. Other times, unfortunately, the family can be the source of the criminal motivation and activities as well.

We are trying to approach the entire youth justice situation with appropriate interventions. The vast majority of young people react well to interventions. Having travelled around the country and met so many young people involved with the youth diversion programmes, I have seen so many young people who have gone through the system and progressed onwards. A young woman in Bandon, for example, in her mid-20s, has graduated from University College Cork, UCC, and is now a social worker. She told me straight out that if she had not been in a youth diversion project she would have gone down the same path as her friends and God knows where she would have ended up. The record is there on the ground, therefore. REPPP in the University of Limerick is putting together the empirical evidence to support this as well. These types of projects and the youth justice system are learning from each other.

As I said, there is still much we can learn and do better, but youth justice is certainly heading in the right direction. The Minister has also been a great supporter of this endeavour within the Department.