Mr. Thomas McCarthy:

I will say something about trauma briefly. There is a template for looking at these adverse childhood experiences, ACEs. The higher the number of ACEs you have, the more likely you are to become addicted to drugs, suffer from mental health, have poor health and end up in prison. Looking at a general family in a working-class community or a Traveller family, all those ACEs are met very quickly when you are quite young. In the Traveller community, for example, there is racism, a high level of bereavement, discrimination, poor living conditions and then the other pressures that are on the families. Then the children go to school and there is bullying, including racial bullying, and exclusion there. There is no one fighting their corner. The same happens in working-class communities, especially when there is addiction in the home or you are living in a block of flats. Even a neighbour's addiction can affect you. We have to think about it like that.