Eileen Flynn (Independent)

I will come at this issue from the angle of poverty and ethnic minorities, and people on the margin of Irish society. I would not be where I am today if it was not for my local youth service in Ballyfermot and its youth workers, Gerry McCarthy and Janice McGarry. For years I was member of a youth forum and I was politicised through the work done by the youth forum. Even back then, youth organisations struggled. In 2011 or 2012, there was a dramatic cut in funding for youth organisations. That funding was not re-instated to organisations like the Ballyfermot youth centre and the family-based youth project in Ballyfermot, and the Garda youth diversion programmes in places such as Ballyfermot and Donegal.

A Senator who spoke previously said that there are few or no youth groups for the Traveller community. That is not true. There is a national Traveller youth group called Involve that works in the midlands, Donegal and all over Ireland, along with the Exchange House service. Again, there is a lack of funding and investment by the Government.The Irish Traveller Movement has a powerful youth-led programme at the moment to deliver youth work on the ground for young Travellers nationally. Poverty is the root cause of young children becoming involved in crime.

I know exactly what it is like, as do many others in the Travelling community, to suffer exclusion at the hands of society and the State. This morning I introduced a Commencement matter relating to the reduced timetables for Traveller and Roma children, and children with additional needs, including those who are autistic. Many children can fall into crime because they are desperate to fit into a community. When you are judged by society because you are different, it is hard to book a table in the local café for you and your friends. I read a quote on social media that stuck with me. It stated that if young people believe they do not belong in a village, they will burn it down. It does not make it right, but that recognises the importance of the sense of belonging and community.

I mean no disrespect to the Government or anyone else, but it needs to be said that we are failing children and those in the margins of society through education, mental health services and addiction services. We forget about the young people I see in Ballyfermot on a daily basis who are addicted to drugs. The lives of young men and women, and their families, are absolutely destroyed. I have two children and I pray to God every day because I see addiction in my own family. I have relations, young men, in Mountjoy Prison at the moment. That is not something of which I am proud. It is not something of which their mother and father are proud. Nobody rears their children to get involved in criminal activities. We must all take responsibility, and not just the youth workers who are underfunded.

I am a qualified youth worker. Yesterday, I met a group of young Traveller students and youth workers. A young Traveller man asked me who Michael D. Higgins was when he saw a portrait of him on a wall. The man asked if Michael D. Higgins was the Taoiseach and I told him he was not. I made this point earlier on a Commencement matter relating to education. It is a failure of the system when a 16-year-old cannot recognise the President. He could turn a car inside out as a mechanic. Traveller children are extremely educated when it comes to practical work but they are failed by the system. They are failed before they complete primary school. So many young Traveller children just fall through the gaps. The same is true of migrant children and those with learning disabilities and additional needs.

A youth service is not a luxury for a young person. In some areas, it is a lifeline that can save children's lives. I do not know where I would be today. There are nine of us, and I was the one who got lucky. I have a brother who is a really bad drug addict. I have so much addiction in my family. I was able to escape poverty because of the quality of the opportunities available to me. Some members of my family did not have the same opportunities. My nephews did not. It is a vicious circle. I am talking at a personal level because it is the best way that I understand the situation. It is the only way I can get people in this House to understand. Some of us get lucky; some of us do not. My brother and I had the exact same upbringing. He had the same opportunities in life as me. He is a few years older than me. He weighs about 5 stone at the moment. He is strung out on drugs. He is a fine, good-looking young man with five children. His situation is the result of the lack of opportunities he got. There are many more young people like him in areas such as Ballyfermot and Donegal, and elsewhere up and down this country. Garda-led youth diversion programmes can work. I have worked with young people in the past and the programmes have worked in areas like Ballyfermot, but I am begging that we invest in our youth organisations to work with our young people. Prevention is better than intervention. Who are we to say that because they are Traveller children their lives matter more or less than a white, settled child? That should not be the case. For me, this is extremely personal. I see well-reared children's mothers praying night and day that they will not get involved with gangs or drugs. It is unfortunate that they often do. It is migrant children, Traveller children, children with disabilities, children who feel like they are lost causes within these communities. We need to invest in these children. It should not matter what part of the country they are from, whether it is Cork, Tallaght or Donegal. All our young people need is respect and equality of opportunities. That does not just lie in the hands of the Minister for Justice; it requires a collective approach around health, mental health, addiction, education and employment. At present, 86% of the Traveller community is unemployed. If people could have a good quality of life and have the same opportunities to work and education, etc., we would not have some of these issues in our community. It is about investing in the communities. Prevention is better than intervention. It is poverty. We need a collective approach to stop crime without blaming the young person. The Government needs to take a degree of responsibility as well because of the level of failures we have had for young people in this country for many decades.