Mr. Thomas McCarthy:

I will make two brief points. When we are talking about young people and youth justice, young Travellers are not even in the conversation generally. I was a youth worker for 15 years and worked in the drugs and alcohol area for the last few years of that. Nobody ever came and asked us if we were working with young Travellers or whether we had done cultural competency or anti-racism training. Nobody ever asked that - neither the funder or those working in the policy area. That is a gap, for sure.

Tallaght is great. It has lots of lovely green spaces, parks and so on but in places like Inchicore or Fatima Mansions, where I live, there is no space for young people. It has been urbanised and is getting even more urbanised all of the time. The playing pitches and Astro turf pitches are all in bits. They are full of glass, the Astroturf is rotten and they are not repaired. The kids are in these urban areas on the corners but where else are they going to go? They do not have anywhere else to go. In my area of Fatima Mansions street dealing is just part of life; it is just the way it is and it is all young men who are involved in it. All of them are criminally groomed into gangs. I know some of the dealers they are dealing for. All of this is going on but we do not want to think about it or talk about it.