Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have already stated we will support the Bill. It is a technical Bill that is absolutely necessary from the point of view of dealing with constitutional issues. Deputy Howlin spoke earlier about mandatory sentencing, which people sometimes believe is a panacea.

I will deal with interventions that are necessary in our communities. This is nothing new as I have raised these issues previously with the Minister. I welcome what the Government has been saying on certain issues. I welcome the fact there are projects that attempt to stop young people becoming engaged in crime and involving themselves in gangs and try to remove them from it. I welcome the idea of community safety forums and I hope they will be given sufficient powers to replace joint policing committees, hopefully with more teeth and involving more agencies. This is the whole-of-government or multi-agency response we have all called for. We need to see this. I also welcome the moves on the youth justice strategy. These measures will only work if the resources are put in place and we need to audit the pilot projects to see they are working and to learn from them. We then need to operate them across the board because we are dealing with these issues everywhere.

I welcome the fact the Government is looking at the idea of a community safety innovation fund, which is similar to the legislation Deputy Ward and I have tabled on putting back into communities the money taken by CAB and the Garda from criminal organisations.

That money needs to go back into those communities, particularly working-class communities, that have been ravaged by the drugs pandemic with we are dealing. We need that to happen as soon as possible. It is as simple as that. It is natural justice. It is not a panacea for everything.

I have stated before and will state again that we need to have a citizens' assembly deal with the wider issue of drugs. Let us look at best practice. I accept that policing alone will not deal with this. I represent Dundalk. Many across society are impacted by drugs and by drug debt intimidation, but in working-class communities it is particularly acute and we need to deal with criminal gangs.

I agree with what has been said about the need for increasing our capacity for community policing. We all know the worth of a good juvenile liaison officer. We need to ensure that they are given all the tools and capacity to be able to deal with this. We know that we need to have interventions at an early stage in order that we can avoid people even getting into this criminal sphere but we need to see it as soon as possible and we need all the necessary resources.

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