Mr. Eddie D'Arcy:

I have been a youth worker for over 40 years. The same as everybody else at the table, I have probably spent all my life trying to divert young people away from criminality, from engaging in antisocial behaviour and from involvement in drugs. You are successful with some of the individual young people you work with, but there is this overwhelming sense that the numbers involved that you need to be supporting are just enormous. All we are really doing is putting a sticking plaster on this. I was in Neilstown with my initiative when Deputy Crowe was in Killinarden with his group. The difficulty for me is that the reasons why young people are vulnerable, fall out of school, get into trouble with the law and get involved in drugs and alcohol are structural. We could get all the money in the world, but all we are trying to do is repair and support young people being damaged by the structures that are there.

That is why I am really interested in trying to see some legislative change that might change how we approach the drug issue, how we support young people and change the education system because the education system in Ireland is probably one of the most unfair systems in the whole of Europe. Take a young fellow from the Oliver Bond flats with a project I am involved in now. He is competing with a youngster going to Blackrock College in the same exam to get the same number of points and he has absolutely none of those resources, yet we say we have a great education system here. The level of inequality is so considerable that we are, to an extent, fighting a losing battle. Yes, we all need more resources. If you take our project in the south-west inner city, the number of youth workers we have compared with the number of young people in the area is tiny. It is minimal. How can we have an impact on the Oliver Bond, James’s Street, Basin Lane and Marrowbone Lane flats with a handful of youth workers when so many of the children and young people in those flats have experienced difficulty and trauma because of historical drug issues from within that community? Yes, we want the extra resources but we also desperately need considerable structural change to create a much more equal society in which all young people are equally valued. That obviously includes young Travellers, young people who are gay and lesbian but also young people coming from those impoverished societies where they do not have any real opportunities and the only opportunity that is presenting in their face is the criminal gang because it is instant money and instant protection from violence and gives them status with a certain cohort in that community. We are allowing that to happen and the only consequence is we are actually criminalising thousands of young men and women every year. In 1975, when I started as a youth worker, there were 750 adults in prison in Ireland and now we have 5,000. The vast majority are there because of their involvement in the drug trade or because of their own drug use. That system is just not working. They get a permanent sentence. As Senator Ruane will tell you, you can forget about our own legislation around spent convictions; it does not exist. Even if Mr. Perth gets a volunteer in west Tallaght to get involved in his local football club and that guy had a drug conviction ten years ago, he will not get his Garda vetting to be able even to contribute positively to his own community. There are so many elements of legislation that make it so difficult for us that we need change. I think the Deputy is right. Maybe the people sitting in this House do not really fully understand that.