Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to these statements and I am grateful to the Minister of State for being here. I thank him and the Minister for Justice, Deputy Humphreys, and before that, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, for the consistent and vitally important work they have done in this area. I have raised several issues in this context before and I do so again. They must be and are central to this strategy. First, there is a requirement to tackle the rise in knife crime across the country. Second, we must address the worrying scenes of antisocial behaviour that have been witnessed in recent months, especially in Dublin. One area of this strategy that I am heartened by is the deliberate focus on those criminal gangs that invest in and groom young people to play a part in their evil activities across our country. It is an approach that is key to any strategy and it offers the biggest outreach.

We talk about the importance of high-visibility policing, which I agree with, and about sentencing and structures, but the key area that must be placed at the heart of any strategy is the ability to introduce a scheme of genuine early intervention. In that regard, it does not matter if such an approach involves officials in the Department of Justice, members of An Garda Síochána, or, more importantly, people in our communities such as teachers, youth workers, parents, guardians, sports coaches and everyone else concerned.

I have spoken with the Minister of State and others many times regarding the issue of knife crime. Looking at the approach taken in Scotland, the Scottish model has worked. It has drastically reduced violent crime and knife crime across Scotland, and especially in Glasgow, which at one stage was the capital of knife crime in Europe. The issue was not approached there as simply as a criminal justice matter but also as a public health matter. All facets of society were included in the model used in Scotland, from youth workers to teachers. It is something that can and will work and it really is the only solution to addressing a rise in crime numbers, particularly among our young people.

When we talk about early intervention, which could be from so many different avenues, as we look to the budget next week, one point that is so important is to ensure that the new community safety fund being set up by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, in tandem with the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, is fully resourced. An Garda Síochána seized €11.2 million from criminal gangs last year. That does not include the funds seized by the CAB. We need to see every cent of that money being ploughed into the communities that need it most for early intervention services to make sure that the knives do not get into young people's hands. We know that young people between the ages of 12 and 17 are the ones most acutely exposed to knife crime. If one carries a knife, one is far more likely to be a victim of a knife crime. The money must also be pushed into providing juvenile liaison officers, JLOs, and everything else to have the facilities to ensure that young people do not get led astray by the drug lords and the gangsters who make our streets a nightmare, in particular in the capital.

A youth justice strategy is acutely different to a wider justice strategy, because what must be at the heart of it is not society in general, us as politicians or members of the Garda, it is the young people of the country. We must ensure that we provide the diversions and opportunities in order that regardless of people's postcode, they have equality of opportunity in life. That is the best approach to any youth strategy, namely, to give them equality of opportunity to pursue whatever they want to do in life and to ensure that we have given them benevolent and worthwhile opportunities in life so that they are not lured into a life of criminality by nefarious actors.

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