Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this important strategy.

Youth justice is something I have worked on for more than 15 years. In 2007, Emer Meehan and I published The Children Court: A National Study on behalf of the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development. In it, we profiled the young people who were before the Children Court. I raise the 2007 study because it is the same 7% or 8% of children today who we know are most likely to become serious offenders. They are also the children most at risk in the State. They have a shorter life expectancy. They are exposed to violence. They are more likely to commit violent acts and more likely to end up in prison. They are the children most likely to commit offences but they are also extremely vulnerable.

These are not my concerns alone. The have also been articulated by people such as Eddie D'Arcy, who has worked in youth work for 30 years, and Chief Superintendent Colette Quinn, who has run the Garda diversion programme many years. These are two of the most experienced and committed people in Ireland in the context of helping children stay out of the criminal justice system and move into appropriate welfare-based referral pathways. I am honoured to have worked closely with both of them for more than five years on the committee to monitor the effectiveness of the youth diversion programme. Thankfully, both of those excellent people were on the steering group for this strategy. I am very glad that they were.

The strategy is welcome. What needs to be addressed, though, is implementation. There are things that we need to make happen. We have always dealt with this matter in the context of youth offending - in terms of crime only. I would prefer it to be looked at from a more hybrid health perspective, not just as a crime-justice issue. I would like it to be treated as a welfare issue. We need to change the narrative in the public mind, in the media and with victims. We need to be focused very much on restorative justice and ensuring that victims are brought into the process where we see that their needs are met way beyond their expectations within that process. When we do a good restorative process, victim needs are far better met.

We also need to look at vetting. We have a lacuna in the legal environment where potentially every child subject to diversion could be subjected to vetting down the road. The whole purpose of diversion is to give them a safe place - a clean slate - but we find down the road that vetting legislation has taken no account of the Children Act and those children go on to find, for example, when they come to apply to become a teacher or a social worker, they meet the challenge of vetting. These are issues because the alleged crime was never tested to the criminal standard because of the diversionary approach. It does not take into account their age at the time, including the fact that they have a lesser capacity. Why are we committing them to a vetting standard of an adult when the incident occurred when they were a child?

There are two other areas of significant concern. On the impact of social media on young people, the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 is totally unsuitable. It was developed in the context of adults grooming children but it did not provide for developments in social media. It is not great legislation when one considers the issues that arise day in, day out. For example, one case I am aware of from my work in youth justice involved a boy and girl, aged approximately 12 or 13, who had a quasi-sexual encounter. To all intents and purposes, it was an exploratory. It was not an issue of grooming or coercive control; it was more a matter of a night out and an inappropriate amount of drink taken. Because of mandatory reporting - a whole other issue that needs to be contextualised - the matter was referred to the Garda. Of course, the Garda is mandated to investigate such matters. The young people involved accepted responsibility and they became involved with the Garda youth diversion programme. Let us say they both grow up to train to become teachers. The girl will be vetted with no issue. However, the boy's application will be held up as a result of this matter. It is a serious risk. Gardaí are well capable of deciding, based on risk factors, which cases involve age-and-stage behaviour and which are criminal matters. The existing legislation is too blunt an instrument and it means that children in the diversion programme are included in the vetting programme later on. It is done to a civil standard, not a criminal standard. People are being admitted to a programme based on no legal advice and admitting to something really because they fear if they go to court, they will get a conviction and then face challenges with vetting later in life.

We need to look at the 18-24 cohort. Neuroscience has taught us so much. We need to be much more attuned to this age in behaviour because we know this is the most at risk group. What we are finding is that we are picking up children at 16 in circumstances where they are already involved in very serious offending and living very chaotic lifestyles. It is way too late. We need to identify those people at a younger stage. I welcome the Garda youth diversion programme working with children at a younger age but we need to be careful about how that is worded and how it is approached. We do not need slippage - moving away from those children who are committing the more serious offences.

There is a strong link, as we know, between exclusion from formal schooling and moving into serious offending. When Deputy Stanton was Minister of State, he was very concerned about that. There is a review of the timetables and suspensions in the youth justice strategy, but I would like it to be much stronger. There is a very clear link between exclusion from the formal schooling system and those people who end up in the criminal justice system. The threshold is changing. The cohort that are the most serious offenders often move out of education at a very early age. Obviously, convincing schools to hang on to those young people is difficult. They may need extra resources to do that. At some point, the youth services in schools give up and hand the cases over to the Garda youth diversion programme. The services often withdraw. For example, one case involved a young person who was homeless and in drug addiction. Every service had already withdrawn by the time the child was 13. They only one that had not was the Garda. That is because it cannot withdraw. The strategy is about integrated approaches rather than only a justice approach. It is also about making sure that mechanisms are put in place to ensure that support is not withdrawn just because they have become the responsibility of the Garda youth diversion programme.

As I have said previously in this House, over many years the monitoring committee called for a social worker based in the Garda office because in many cases welfare referrals were made but were not necessarily followed up. My apologies, I think I am over time.

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