Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

4 o’clock

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. I note that Mr. Deaglán Ó Briain is sitting beside the Minister of State. As one will not find a more committed public servant in the Department or in any Department, it is great to see him here.

I am interested in the remarks the Minister of State has made. He said that his Department is working with colleagues in other relevant Departments and this is welcome, because it is often the case that Departments do not speak to one another as they should. He also said they are working with "agencies at national and local levels in six potential pilot areas to develop a joint commissioning approach to implement the no wrong door principle to ensure there is a cohesive response by public services to this group of young people". I am encouraged by this remark. The pilot will be supported by the REPPP team at the University of Limerick. I am interested in knowing where the six pilot areas are. The Minister of State went on to state, "Essentially, the idea is that we will map the availability of current services in each of these areas, map the target group of young people in the area, identify the gaps in necessary services and bring all relevant statutory and community voluntary services together in an integrated response to the needs and challenges identified." Often when I come into this Chamber and receive a script from a Minister, it feels as though there is not an awful lot in it. However, I think there is something in that. I congratulate the Minister of State on that but I am interested in knowing exactly where these six areas are.

I am the Labour Party’s spokesperson on education on justice. Many people may feel that they are two very separate areas. To be honest, though, they are incredibly linked. Reference was made to the DEIS+ proposal, and I want to focus on that for a second. I have been liaising with a number of principals in the Dublin 17 area, in my own constituency, in west Tallaght and Ballymun. They are advocating for such a strategy to be brought forward to have a different designation within the DEIS programme for schools that are acutely disadvantaged, in the area of trauma. This is because they are talking about children who are lost. I raised this issue with the Minister for Education last night, but if the Minister of State at the Department of Justice is talking about an interdepartmental approach, he needs to hear it as well. Principals are telling me they are losing young people at the earliest of ages. I said this on the record of the House last night, and I will say it again to the Minister of State. I was speaking with one principal who says she has to change the route that they walk to swimming in the morning time because of a local feud. I asked her if she was saying she was afraid that some of her children were going to get shot by mistake. She said “Yes”. She had not thought to phrase it in that way, because this is just what principals do in acutely disadvantaged areas. They just adapt to the situation around them. Yet, she is acutely aware of a feud in the local area. There are guns involved, and she does not want to walk her children into the midst of that. Therefore, she finds a different route to swimming. Is it not utterly depressing that children in a primary school would have to reroute their way to go swimming in the morning, in case one of them gets killed by a bullet?

At the heart of this, and I need the Minister of State to hear what I am saying here, is that 20 years ago, when I first became a primary school teacher in an acutely disadvantaged area, they used to say that once this generation of grannies - particularly grannies - gets older, it will be replaced by the heroin generation and then we will be in trouble. This is because 20 years ago, the grannies kept families and communities together. They predated the heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. Families could fall back on these grannies. There were also grandads, but they were grannies in the main. We used to say that when members of the heroin generation become grannies and granddads, we will have a problem. We are here now. That dysfunction is unfortunately now here. Society and these communities cannot depend as much as they used to on that generation. They used to step in and mind the little one or the little fellow and provide routine to those lives. On the basis of that, dysfunction is creeping in and young people are getting more distracted than they ever had been before. They are moving away from the mainstream economy and mainstream society into the hands of those who would use them for their own profit. What is being said to me is absolutely appalling. Unfortunately, it is only going to get worse.

The Minister of State has identified six geographical areas and I can only assume where they are. I ask that within those six areas, the Minister of State would consider the three areas I have referenced. I do not like referencing areas in this House because I do not like the reputational damage or the stigmatising that goes with that. However, I cannot hear what they are saying to me without raising it with the Minister of State.

The issue of drugs has been referenced and it is a live issue. In fairness to the Government, it has raised the profile of the debate around drugs. As it is holding a citizens’ assembly on drugs, I believe it is only reasonable and rational that we move to a situation where no young person, or anybody who has a drug issue, would be brought through the criminal justice system. The empowerment of young people through the educational system is key to this. I will make reference very quickly to the FAI report, which was published two weeks ago. It focuses on sports and the poor standard of sporting facilities that are available to many young people. Soccer is the game of many working-class communities. One might not like that or people might not accept it but it is a fact. If there is a poor standard of those facilities, often some people can think that society does not respect them. They think the authorities do not respect them. They think the facilities do not show them respect and therefore, they do not feel respected.

I have a few concluding points. The six areas the Minister of State referenced are welcome. I do not think it is necessarily fair that the Minister of State would name them here in the House, because people will then inevitably ask, “What about these other areas?”. However, I hope those areas include the three I have referenced. I need the Minister of State to take the issue of the heroin generation seriously. I need him to take seriously the issue of trauma-related support for potential DEIS+ schools. They are talking about multidisciplinary teams that would be available to them, such as those that are available in Dublin 1. They are talking about teacher support and trauma-based support. They feel that would be key to not losing any more young people to the clutches of drug gangs etc. The issue of drug-related intimidation, as has been raised by other Deputies, is real and rife. It is unfortunately younger people they often find to do the business for them.

The last point I will make is about integration. In other jurisdictions, they have found in migrant communities that when a family comes to a new country, those who head that family tend to accept whatever abuse or discrimination they come up against. This is because they made the choice to come to a different country. Therefore, they are less likely to react against it. However, the generation that comes after that, who did not make that choice and yet who suffer racism, discrimination and insults are the ones we need to be mindful of in respect of how they are feeling, how they are integrating and how they are being empowered. In any country in the world, it is not a matter of the first generation who comes, but the generation afterwards. They will internalise this friction and negativity and that can go anywhere. We have to take the experience that has happened in other countries on board in order that we do not create a cohort of young people who other people may have discriminatory feelings about because of their ethnicity, even though they are absolutely Irish. They may use racial taunts against them. We must not create a situation whereby they utilise that in a destructive way and find themselves even more alienated from mainstream society. I am careful as I can be with my words, but I think the Minister of State will understand what I am saying.

The Labour Party is happy to work with the Minister of State. There are positive things in this report but certainly, there is no place for us to be complacent.

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