Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)

I thank the Minister of State for coming in today. I will not go over what my colleagues have mentioned but I would like to acknowledge the family resource centres in Roscommon, Foróige, Youth Work Ireland and the 101 youth diversion schemes going on around the country. I ask that we continue to support them and look to expand the range of their offering.

Senator Flynn mentioned Ballyfermot and Donegal and how the influx of people turning to crime and criminal activity has increased there, but it knows no borders, county lines or constituency lines. It is only by having conversations like we are having now that we will highlight it, address it and come up with potential solutions that will reduce the number and reduce the curve. Senator Rabbitte mentioned education and that was what I had down here to speak about in relation to this. Education, education, education - that will be the key to turning the curve, diverting these people away from crime and empowering our young people.

I spoke in the Chamber yesterday about a pilot programme in a secondary school in Strokestown, where a commercial entity has gone in and started delivering Safe Pass courses to students in transition year. I highlight it because those students now have something to look forward to in the summer months when they go out and do a physical job they would otherwise have been impeded from doing because they did not have the proper paperwork. Since Covid, young people have a different social environment from the one we all grew up in and experienced. They engage with things very differently from how we did, and that is why we have to constantly evolve and come up with solutions.

I met representatives of the north-west restorative justice service the other night. They are talking about changing cultural norms and what needs to change. They are on about drug intimidation. They made a valid point to me that our prisons are full to capacity at the moment. By building more prisons, are we going to put more people away or do we have to change how we deliver and administer justice? They highlight the fact there is no such thing as a victimless crime nowadays. We need to integrate people who have had one or two indiscretions back into their communities and let them serve a part in and become part of those communities. They have a great way of doing that. It is by engaging with businesses, individuals or domestic households who have experienced crime or suffered from crime and having them speak with people who have been convicted or found guilty of these things. It is a two-way process of rebuilding but if the victims can engage with the perpetrators, there is no reason the communities cannot engage with the perpetrators. It was also highlighted to me that young people nowadays are using social media and specifically Snapchat - I do not know if I am allowed to say that - and are being offered opportunities for easy money. This easy money has a knock-on effect. We would be doing a disservice to young people throughout the country if we did not try to come up with a way of being able to tag and call out the social media companies to actually monitor and back this up themselves because there is a knock-on effect to this. It is affecting families and communities and the number of suicides in our rural communities at the moment. It does not stop there. Drug intimidation follows these people, who may be incarcerated or take their own lives. These individuals are being followed for the money they are losing through this.

We need education, first of all, within the youth diversion programmes, schools, youth clubs and family resource centres to support and provide the information and give them the opportunities to learn the impacts of their actions and where they are leading to. It is about empowering these individuals to determine and plot out their own futures. I wish the Minister of State the very best of luck with that.