Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for coming in. We are always trying to use our time in the meeting. We are here to do a body of work. Sometimes for us it can be frustrating revisiting topics such as the impacts of poverty, intergenerational trauma and the concentration of this in disadvantaged communities. The reason it can be frustrating is because many of the people who are here at this committee are here because these are the issues we want to progress and so on. One half of us is thinking about how we want to address those issues and not just restating them but by the same token, the reality is that many of those issues do not get the attention in this House or the country because they do affect a minority of people and there can never be enough opportunities to restate those issues. I just want to acknowledge that. Many people in this room understand many of the things that the witnesses have spoken about because most of us have lived experience or been educated by many of the groups in our areas about those issues. I acknowledge the youth services and drugs task force in my area, which are fantastic at feeding that stuff in to us and trying to convert it into a policy.

I will focus on some more detailed questions. It is not that I do not understand the issues which Mr. D’Arcy raised but I want to focus on more detailed questions about how this committee might make further recommendations to tackle them.

On youth justice and the youth justice project, many youth programmes are funded by youth justice or the UBU. There has been some expansion in youth justice lately. Locally we had an extra eight or ten youth workers in that sector but we have not seen the UBU expand. First, will the witnesses talk about the pressures on different youth services in balancing those two streams? Second, will they talk about the practicalities of dealing with a young person where the use of drugs is an issue? I am thinking of people who are referred to a youth justice project because there might have been drug use or some very low level of involvement in the drugs trade. What actually happens to that young person? What work can the youth services do with them? How might criminal sanctions play a part in restricting the work of youth services? How can youth services work with and advocate on behalf of that young person?