Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am happy to see this Bill being debated on Second Stage today. This Bill is a protection for families, children and communities that face the daily scourge of drug dealers. We have all heard the stories and we have all seen the court reports. It is accepted that despicable drug gangs have been targeting children and exploiting them to move and sell drugs for many years. These individuals will seek out a child or a group of children to do their bidding. Dealers do this knowing full well that if the child is caught holding or moving drugs, the dealers themselves will not be held responsible in any meaningful way. They target these children, who can be really good kids, raised by hard-working families who do not send their children out to do this. From the stories I have heard, I know that some of these children are being enticed to do the dealers' dirty work with the promise of money, mobile phones or even status. There are children who fall foul of these gangs because they are disadvantaged for whatever reason. Some of these kids might already owe a drug debt to these criminals. They may have been targeted because they come from a background of disadvantage but the main point here is that they are just children. The Garda does its best to hold these disgusting individuals to account through the courts but there is simply not enough legislation to cover this crime. The members of the Garda working with these children have said themselves that the targeting and coercion of a child into moving or holding drugs is usually just the first step before the child is sucked up into this sort of criminality. I accept that as a society, we need to examine the underlying reasons as to why children are attracted to this lifestyle. We need to have the conversation about drugs and we need to see the citizens' assembly set up but as legislators, we are responsible for putting things in place that will make it more difficult for these criminals to operate. That is why we need this Bill.

We need it to offer protection to our children, our neighbours' children and our communities as a whole.

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