Mr. Gerard Roe:

One thing is sticking with me. It is something Senator Ruane said about mental health and the whole area of neurodivergence, which is quite a new concept and not many people will be familiar with it. Most of us can testify and know when we are working with young people from age ten, that large swathes of them can engage meaningfully but there are just some young people who just cannot co-operate and they are labelled the bad child. They are not. They need an assessment. They become that 18 year-old and the ones in the gap between 18 and 24 who go to prison. They are going to Oberstown or Mountjoy when they should be going to see a psychiatrist to be put on the medication they should be on. Then they would not be self-medicating with weed. I am not the expert there but I have the trained eye and I happen to be ADHD myself. I know what I am dealing with or when I see it in other young people. This is the worst country in the world, next to south New Zealand where the Maori live, for people walking around undiagnosed with ADHD. The intervention they actually need is to be seeing a psychiatrist to get the proper help. We know the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS is difficult and stuff like that but a lot of these young men and women are going into Oberstown and places they should not be in the first place. So many people are in prison who ended up there over things they did out of impulsivity because they cannot control it. They have been misunderstood. I know that opens up something and I do not have all the answers but I am very interested in it. It is something that has to be looked at. I believe youth work plays a very important role in that context.