Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)

It is not that the Garda or any other authority figure goes knocking on the door and tells the young person to go into the youth diversion; it is that the young person has come to their attention. My experience of the youth diversion programmes is that most of them do work in a more proactive and constructive way. They do outreach, they engage with young people and in a preventative way are working to engage young people before they will come to the formal attention of the Garda or the authorities.