Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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The reason I asked that question is I was involved in a project in Cork with young people who had dropped out of school and got into difficulty with the Garda. At any one time, we had about 50 people in. We provided even simple things like literacy and numeracy, which they were running into difficulties with, providing support for them and eventually getting them out onto the jobs market. When we did research about people who had been with us five years earlier, over 70% of the group were in full-time employment. The important thing is intervention. Can that be replicated in areas where people are going down the road towards drug misuse? Can more be done in that whole area?