Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and he is very welcome to the House. I also welcome this Bill about which we have spoken on a number of occasions. The fact is that depending on where you are lucky or unlucky enough to be born, and the family into which you are born, you either have a lifetime of opportunity rolled out in front of you, with parents, families and networks supporting a life lived to the full or you can have an influence on your community and, in your family in many instances, which denies and steals from children any sort of a future at all before they are even able to read and write, if they are even afforded that opportunity. This idea that there are people who intentionally set out to steal that future from children, that grooming, and direction needs to be criminalised. I like the definition of "directs" within the Bill, which is to give "an order, or instruction guidance ... or [make] a request of, a person ... to [carry] out [an] activity,". It covers the whole gamut of how a suggestion can be made to children of what will gain approval.

I have just come from the audiovisual room where Sporting Liberties are making a fantastic presentation about the needs in the area of Dublin 8. In that area in 2011, the population was 50,163. Other areas such as Coolock, Roscrea, Walkinstown, Ballyboden, Castleknock, Finglas West, Virginia and Newcastle, with a total population of 47,000, have 22 GAA pitches in total. All of Dublin 8, with a population of 50,000, has no GAA pitch or facilities. Children are left to congregate on the streets because they have nowhere else to go. I was out with the Minister of State in the Cherry Orchard Equine Centre which is fantastic. Both in that organisation and Saint Ultan’s School next door, there is that whole campus idea of supporting the community. They work in the youth diversion programme which the Minister of State has very generously supported. They work very hard for young people to give them somewhere to go, give them purpose and leadership, to give them mentoring and to have male role models in their lives who invest in them. The fact is that depending on where you are born and where you grow up, you either have opportunity or you do not. We need to ensure that the people who would steal that opportunity can be imprisoned.

Our party leader, the Taoiseach, has often said that our party is for the people who get up early in the morning. I have constantly said that the people who get up early in the morning include the mothers in Cherry Orchard who go and do three cleaning jobs in the day so that they can buy the Canada Goose jacket for their child or the fancy designer runners so that some drug dealer does not do it in order to induce a child into carrying or holding drugs. How many times have we come across young people when they are asked to do this and this is what they get? They do not get just the flash things which they might otherwise never have an opportunity to get. They also get status in their community and it is a necessity that we not just criminalise those who would divert away their future and opportunity in life but, also, that we put in all of those services like the youth diversion programme, the GAA pitches and all of the other asks. It is very important that we do that.

The citizens' assembly report is quite mammoth but I have gone through its 36 recommendations. Many of those recommendations are exactly around this sort of thing which is that we have to criminalise the idea that you would induce a child into criminal activity. We also, however, need to put the supports in and ensure that wherever one is born, one has an equality of opportunity, and of actually getting to school. In schools like St. Ultan's, they run programmes on getting every child to brush their teeth because in many homes they may not get the opportunity to be taught those things. There is also personal grooming and care, to encourage self-esteem so that they get that those opportunities, feel that self-respect and have a greater resilience not to be tempted into a status and an inclusion in a gang, to be "somebody" in their community, when otherwise they may not be so. They deserve all of those rights and opportunities.

There are points I would be curious and wonder about on Committee Stage, and which I am sure the Minister of State will be able to explain and elaborate on for us. For example, what happens when this happens in the family? What happens if the adult in question is a family member? What is the evidentiary bar going to be for a criminal prosecution and whose statement will have to be taken? Does the child have to give evidence? How are we going to do that when somebody is a family member? I have no doubt that that has already been well thought through but we just need to be sure that we have on the record of the House how we are going to ensure this is not a symbolic criminal offence on the Statute Book but is something which is executable and will deliver real people who will be seen to be successfully prosecuted in the criminal justice system. Depending on how that evidentiary bar will be reached; it will be important to know whether this is merely pyrrhic or in actual fact executable.

Within the grooming, there would be family and community loyalties. How are we going to deal with that? Is it going to be the say-so of a garda? I do not see anything in the legislation which states that. Who is going to give evidence and what sort of supports will be put in place by us for that?

There is no question but that An Garda are already alive to this as an issue and already see it. I am chair of the Dublin 12 drugs and alcohol task force and the contributions of An Garda at meetings of that committee are extraordinary and very insightful. They go out and meet young people in the community and are in touch with what their influences are, who is meeting and talking to them. Having a community Garda presence is very important; gardaí who are accessible to young people can have that flow of information and, hopefully, break that cycle which condemns young people at a very young age.

I am also a little concerned about the fact that sometimes the person who is coercing here or who is suggesting or leading astray, and potentially coming within the definition of grooming under this Bill, may themselves to be a reasonably young person, may be a teenager themselves who has already been led down a path. I am mindful of the lessons and recommendations of the citizens' assembly to ensure that we do not criminalise people too early and set them on a path where they will be in prisons away from the opportunity of redemption. Ensuring we have diversion programmes, opportunities and other alternatives to prison in those instances, depending on the age of the perpetrator and the accused, will be very important. We will need clarification on that point on Committee Stage to be sure how this works out as we go through each of the individual offences.The low threshold is right. It will be important that the child does not have a liability. The Joint Committee on Children is due to visit Oberstown at some point in the next couple of months. We do not want children to end up there unless it is absolutely necessary. Ensuring there is no legal liability on the children will be very important. At the same time it will be important to review how that operates to ensure that it is not being exploited by criminal gangs. There are areas, and the Minister and I have been in them together, where people are afraid to go out, afraid to take initiative in their communities; they are afraid because just to exist there they have to turn a blind eye. This needs to be a completely comprehensive response. This is just one small instrument. Naturally I and Fine Gael will be supporting the Bill.