Dr. Niall Muldoon:

One of the most enlightening pieces of work that I have ever heard was from somebody in an inner city situation. That person was a social worker who had been there for a long time and said that essentially, what they were trying to do was take a situation where they took somebody away from a €60,000 or €70,000 job, if criminality is a job, and then provide them with what? The dole. We need to find a way to supplant what they are offered. The child who was on €70,000 and is now on the dole asks what he is going to do with that and tells us it is a better way to go. One can understand where children are coming from. That needs to be recognised. The work that has been done in Dublin's north-east inner city has been really positive. Much work needs to be done relating to that society. When we talk about trying to provide the best for our children, it has to be about helping the parents to do that, not us as a State or as social workers. The parents are already there. Can we help them to be better with their children? Part of that is the economic circumstances in which they find themselves, how they make ends meet and what they have done to survive. Can we change that? As the Deputy said, we need to cut out the intergenerational passing on of these traumas.