Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for raising what is a very real issue for many people in society, in terms of increased antisocial behaviour. We need both approaches. We need consistently and constantly to deal with the source and the evolution of this, including in school programmes. A lot is being done in schools actually. I visit schools a lot. I was in one recently where there was tremendous inclusivity. The school and the children themselves were working on a cultural committee involving different nationalities and so on. It was very heartwarming to see. In many cases the schools are well ahead of the rest of society.

In the adolescent and teenage years, there is a heightened degree of antisocial behaviour, which sometimes manifests itself in significant violence and attacks on people and the creation of a sense of insecurity as people walk in public parks or on public streets. There are consequences in the use of antisocial behaviour orders. The deployment of body-worn cameras for gardaí will help to observe stuff. The community safety partnerships and their introduction is important, as are the community safety plans for every area. The expansion of youth justice and youth diversion measures is also important but we have to do more on that, including developing more youth programmes for young people for whom the mainstream school system is not responding or supporting them in order to keep them within the conventional system. We have Youthreach and many other programmes, but a renewed effort is required to deal with this. The fact that the youth portfolio is now in the Department of education will help in creating a proper continuum from education to youth services, which we had previously.

Area partnerships are very important to restore a community's sense of ownership of these issues. Again, some of those area partnerships over the last decade or so went into decline. I have witnessed in the north-east inner-city initiative very significant progress being made. I do not think we can just deal with it with consequences alone, although there should be consequences. We need to consistently look at what kind of effective and impactful consequences would make a difference.

We brought in laws, as the Deputy knows, to tackle the antisocial use of scramblers and quad bikes and all of that. We have given additional powers to gardaí but the Deputy is talking about something that is below the level of knife crime and so on. He is talking about general antisocial and intimidatory behaviour, attacks and so on. The line between-----

See this speech in context