Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

5 o’clock

The youth justice strategy is quite a positive document that has the young people of Ireland front and centre.

I taught in quite a sheltered community where my local school was located. Many teachers I trained with in college told me of their immense despair when, several years after teaching a lovely innocent child in a classroom, they found out that a couple of years later the same youngster had got caught up with gangs or criminality. Some of them paid the ultimate price with their lives. It is important Government has a strategy to pick up young people and keep them on the right track. This needs to be backed up with Government investment in those pick-up supports.

Wearing my teacher’s hat, one of the first alarm bells that can often ring in terms of how a child is being parented, minded and reared relates to issues around parental responsibility and how a child is being looked after. The Tusla thresholds are questionable and need to be reviewed by Government. There are many elements to this. Deputy Gino Kenny was correct to mention the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs Use. It would be a blind approach to have youth strategies and have Fagin’s law before the Dáil two weeks ago, but not to have feed-in from the citizens' assembly. It is important that we have that.

There is a need for a revamp of drug education and awareness in schools. We have had a national debate going on for two years about relationship and sexuality education and I am glad that is being overhauled and modernised but there are drugs on the market and being pedalled on the streets that many of us in this House have not an iota about. Government strategy is way behind.

On the day that is in it, it is important something be said about the suggestion the Special Criminal Court should be disbanded. Absolutely not. It is a robust institution that has taken on the worst of criminal gangs. I remember 28 October 2005 very well. I was not a Teachta Dála at the time but a councillor and was canvassing in the village of Parteen with Deputy O’Dea. We came on a scene where somebody had been killed in gangland activity. It was a haunting image. I am glad the courts system was able to take on that gang and many others. We need to protect it.

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