Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. It will create a new criminal offence to tackle the issue of adults encouraging young people and children to get involved in criminal behaviour. As someone who has worked with young people from disadvantaged communities and worked with communities tackling drug problems for more than 30 years, I have witnessed this happening over and over again. Younger people are groomed by older criminals and drug dealers, many of whom were groomed themselves. They are lured by flash lifestyles, expensive watches, cars, cash in their pockets, and for many, the status of being apparently untouchable. They hide the drugs, they run them from place to place and they hide guns in their homes and communities. They are the eyes and ears for the older adults when gardaí enter their communities. They are used and abused and put directly in danger by these people, who only care about themselves and their ability to greedily make money from drugs.

Let us not fool ourselves that a law will change what is happening on the ground for these young people and children. We need to ensure that long before gangs get their hooks into them that we provide help and support for them and their families. What do we need? We need more youth workers and more youth facilities. We need to support the coaches and mentors in our clubs and sports organisations, dance clubs and the many voluntary community groups around the country. We need to get back to developing community projects in working-class communities to empower those communities. We need more resources in our schools, including smaller classes. We need therapeutic interventions and assessments, when required, to identify young people at risk. We need more social workers who are not just fire fighters, running themselves ragged trying to put out fires, and who are unable to build relationships so they get burnt out and leave child protection services. If we do not address this, we will count the cost in the lost lives of thousands of young people whose potential has been lost because the State left them behind and did not provide the correct supports.

I also wish to raise another serious issue involving young people and the drug gangs who use them to run drugs in our communities, which is scramblers. The gangs run drugs using scramblers because they know that gardaí are prevented from dealing with this dangerous activity by a lack of legislation, low Garda numbers and a lack of a strategy to deal with it. Over the past number of months, police forces in Wales and England have established specialist anti-scrambler units with high-powered scramblers working in teams to challenge the free rein that the gangs have had for years, which has created a sense of lawlessness in their communities.

Those units have other specialised equipment, including a spray that has a unique identifier that allows the police to identify people involved in drug dealing and the dangerous driving of scramblers on our streets. I have spoken to gardaí who are deeply frustrated that they do not have the law that was promised last year, and they have neither the numbers nor the equipment to tackle this scourge. We see that. You can go onto TikTok or Instagram and see that it is full of scramblers driving and doing wheelies up and down our roads and footpaths, on dual carriageways, on motorways, at funerals. We see that and we see the gardaí unable to deal with it. The inaction of the Government on this issue is putting the lives of the young people driving these scramblers at risk and putting the lives of ordinary citizens in danger every day. It is long past time for action on the legislation and the establishment of specialist units.

See this speech in context