James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators for their valuable contributions. The provisions in the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 will make a real difference to the lives of vulnerable children who have been groomed into criminal activity. The Bill will introduce important new measures to enable us to tackle adults who groom children into a life of crime. For the first time in Irish law, it will be an offence for an adult to compel, coerce, direct or deceive a child for the purposes of engaging in criminal activity or for an adult to induce, invite, aid, abet, counsel or procure a child to engage in criminal activity. The ambit is quite wide to try to catch every single situation where a child might be groomed into committing a criminal offence.The threshold, therefore, is quite low. Offences created through this Bill do not require that the child ultimately carries the crime, is charged with the crime or is convicted of any crime. The Bill has been carefully tailored to address the insidious and often overlooked harm done by adults when they groom children into criminal activity. The law as it stands today does not recognise that there are, in fact, two distinct aspects to this type of crime, namely, the visible crime against the victim, as well as the very grave wrong against the child. The provisions in this Bill go further than previous attempts to legislate. As I said, any type of crime is liable for the grooming offence. This includes all the low-level offences associated with criminal activity for which punishments provided for adult groomers in the existing law can be fairly minor. The provisions of this Bill are designed to enable intervention at an early stage, whenever this is possible. Tusla has also welcomed the provisions of this Bill.

It is quite correct, as Senator Seery Kearney pointed out, and we know this from the Greentown project, which is our project run by the Department of Justice through the University of Limerick, that the most common offenders for grooming are actually found in the late teens and early 20s age category. These young people are often victims themselves. The Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, of course, retains discretion concerning whether to bring a prosecution in particular circumstances. We are currently reviewing the extension of the youth diversion projects to those in the 18 to 25 category, and very careful consideration will be given to this extension. Most other countries go up to the age of 24 or 25 as well, so this will also be part of the overall comprehensive programme from the Department of Justice in this respect.

As all the Senators pointed out as well, addressing resilience and opportunities in all of these communities is critical too. I refer to ensuring that people have faith in the State, have these supports available and in place and thus have alternative opportunities to spend their time. Much discussion has taken place since the Covid-19 pandemic regarding the increase in anti-social behaviour in Dublin. One thing that can be taken from all that discussion is how important all our community groups are in helping young people to stay away from anti-social behaviour and criminal activity. Those support networks in communities simply could not be provided during the pandemic, although many community groups did their very best without being able to go out onto the streets. Without those support networks in place, young people lost that structure. Equally, an element of the anti-social behaviour we have witnessed has been seen right across the world. This shows the real importance of youth diversion, UBU and inner-city projects, whatever the case might be, and how important these types of undertakings are. I say this because once these programmes were not available we saw how young people could easily fall into the trap of engaging in anti-social behaviour and criminal activity. We need, therefore, to see more of these types of programmes and supports, and I certainly agree with the comments in this regard.

In terms of evidence, much of the research we are doing with the Greentown project is around the areas where children are growing up surrounded by criminal networks, whether these are within the family or the community. They may feel these networks are either part of normal life or that breaking out of them really means going against the grain, if you like. This is the situation the Greentown project is continuing to research, and it has advised in the context of this legislation on how to break these criminal networks and how we can intervene at a much earlier stage to break the pathways that lead young people to get involved in crime. The location of Greentown is a secret to protect the social workers and other youth workers involved in the project and evidence-gathering to support it. A great deal of information is being gleaned from the Greentown project and it is being used in other projects as well as we bring them forward.

This is important legislation. Obviously, it is not the sole answer to this problem in and of itself. It is important, though, to set out the marker that those who groom children into crime are committing a serious offence and this type of offence deserves to have a separate punishment. This legislation also sets out a marker that young people getting involved in crime are often the victims being groomed into crime and deserve these supports that must be put in place to help them.