Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy McAuliffe for raising what we should be debating rather than having Deputies sniping across the Chamber. We have major questions to deal with in the future in respect of drugs and criminal gangs in this city. I welcome the new implementation group which, as far as I know, was set up this week in Cherry Orchard. I hope it will have the same effect that similar organisations had in other areas.

At the end of today, we are talking about people and communities. My community is no different from many other communities in Dublin, other cities and throughout the country. Many communities have seen the worst - I hope it is the worst - that can be brought upon them by these criminal gangs. They have seen the drugs trade leading to wholescale shootings, intimidation and murder. In my area, there was a feud for a number of years between the Rattigan and Thompson gangs, which is the way in which it was presented in the newspapers in any event. It was as if that justified it. We had 16 deaths in that feud alone. We have another feud, which seems to be ongoing, an element of which was before the Special Criminal Court this week. It has left 18 people dead, including a totally innocent person from Drimnagh, Trevor O’Neill, who happened to be on this holidays enjoying himself. It was a case of mistaken identity and, bang, there goes another life. That is the way these gangs treat people in their communities and, as we have seen, outside their communities.

The trappings of wealth are not the yacht or big house. The trappings of wealth that encourage young people towards some of these gangs can be a Rolex watch or a flashy car or it could be the bullet-proof windows we have seen in some of these houses. There are gangs of adoring, loyal kids or lieutenants who do the bidding of these gangs for a score here or perhaps just to feel part of a buzz. Before long, they get sucked into the criminal world and are in the clutches of drugs. They sell drugs, prostitute themselves or rob to feed their habit or they extort, threaten, enforce and intimidate others, whether the members of an addict's family or the addict. Then there is the violence associated with that and the destruction of property. All of this continues to feed into the problem. It makes life very difficult for all of the families involved, those around them, the addicts and those who are caught up in this.

We need to focus on how we tackle the intimidation, the chaotic behaviour of the addicts and the stigmatising of communities, 99% of which are absolutely fabulous people. A small cohort, at the behest of somebody who thinks he is a criminal overlord, believe they can twist or turn the tap and bring destruction on families and the community. That has happened and not only in my area.

That is where much of the work is. How do we break up those criminal gangs? For years in this Chamber, we have been calling for CAB to do much more work and to focus on smaller elements, including the lieutenants. It took years before we started to see that shift and we have seen some progress. We cannot have areas inside or outside Dublin that do not have a drug squad in the local Garda unit or district which can target these criminal gangs. We have seen exactly what young people are faced with, day in and day out, on their way to school where they see people shooting up on the stairs or have to step over, as Deputy Tóibín said, those who are comatose from a drug. They have to learn how to hide when a shooting is going on in their area. They recognise the runners. They see this and are often more aware than the adults in those communities are of what is going on. We need to think about how that informs their small minds and the way they will look at society in the future. That dereliction of our duty needs to end. We need to focus and do much more to ensure society, communities, young people and adults can live in safety and are not intimidated in the way they are now.

We need to address the issue of legal and illegal drugs because the decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs does not address the issues underlying much of this.

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