Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two issues this afternoon. I wish to ask the Minister for Justice and Equality to attend the House to address an issue which I think most Members would agree is a major problem in Irish society. It is not a new problem, but in the last number of weeks, as has been alluded to already, it has become prominent. I refer to the area of gun crime. Very close to where I live, there was an interception of a gang apparently on the way to commit a murder. Intercepting that person was great work by the Garda. A garda was shot in the line of duty only days ago, and then, shockingly, this week we have heard reports of a baby being caught in the crossfire. Too often in society, when there is a gun crime or a shooting, it is dismissed as gangland. Sometimes people will even say that as long as gangs are doing it to each other, it does not affect them. We cannot really live in a society that would stand over such comments as that. This week it is quite clear that gardaí are putting their bodies on the line and even infants often get caught in the crossfire.

It is time to have a national debate on gun crime, how it is affecting our society and how children are being desensitised to it. It is particularly disturbing, I would suggest, that any child would grow up anywhere in Ireland and hear that there has been a murder overnight in their area. It is not good enough, it is not normal, it is not right, and we should never ever consider it to be normal. It would befit this House to have such a debate with the Minister for Justice and Equality and allow him to outline his attempts to tackle this very serious issue.Unfortunately, there is a certain amount of empowerment that comes with handling a firearm and young people are often attracted to that way of life. We need to understand the reasons behind that and tackle them.

Related to that, I would like to have another debate with the Minister for Education and Skills on the wide-ranging issue of educational disadvantage. We had some positive statistics last week on the rate of literacy among children in Ireland. Much credit has to go to successive Ministers in that regard. For our part in the Labour Party, in the previous Government we placed a huge emphasis on literacy and it is good to see the Government is continuing that good work. All those efforts are to be commended, but there are many overlapping reasons educational disadvantage is still an issue. We still have one child in three leaving the DEIS primary schools with basic reading problems. We have a 17.9% functional illiteracy rate among adults in the country. It is an issue of power that we need to address.

There are many facets to this issue of educational disadvantage. It needs to be tackled from pregnancy to infancy, to early school years and beyond. It is something that should be addressed, if possible, in a wide-ranging debate. If the Leader could facilitate that debate, it would be of great benefit to see how we can empower all citizens to seek a life for themselves in mainstream society through education and not to turn to other areas of empowerment which, unfortunately, we have seen cause such devastation to families and to members of the Garda Síochána this week.