Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy should know we have funded a number of very successful restorative justice projects that are up and running. Over time I would like to see more use of them across the various courts. Equally so, since I became Minister I introduced significant reform in terms of trying to use community service orders as an alternative to prison in order to allow pay-back to communities. I refer to community service orders to assist tidy towns groups in graffiti removal and other such tasks.

To return to ASBOs, I implacably disagree with the Deputy on what he, in effect, is trying to do. I accept there is a problem with anti-social behaviour in the country. There are other laws, apart from the ASBO legislation that could deal with the matter and no doubt they are used by the Garda Síochána in that respect. The principle behind the legislation is, in effect, that the fewer orders made and the fewer occasions on which children are brought to court, which is the ultimate sanction, the more successful the scheme is because one has already intervened with the children and their parents and they do not come to the notice of the Garda Síochána any further.

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