Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023: Second Stage

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister of State at the Department of Justice (Deputy James Browne)

I am pleased to bring the Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023 before the Seanad today.

This Bill addresses a very specific issue: to recognise and make punishable in law the harm caused to children by drawing them into a life of crime. Two programme for Government commitments are being delivered through this Bill. The first is to legislate against the coercion and use of minors in the sale and supply of drugs and, second, to criminalise adults who groom children to commit crimes.

This new legislation will outlaw the grooming of children into crime. For the first time, it will be an offence for an adult to compel, coerce, direct or deceive a child for the purpose of engaging in criminal activity, or for an adult to induce, invite, aid, abet, counsel or procure a child to engage in criminal activity. This is a particularly insidious harm with long-term consequences for the child victims, especially when it is carried out as part of a pattern over a sustained period of time, or by a trusted person within a child’s circle.

The existing law provides that an adult who uses a child to commit a crime can be punished for that crime. It does not address the separate and, arguably, more significant harm that is done to the child by grooming them into criminal activity. The law has never before recognised that there are 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 new grooming offences created by this Bill do not replicate or duplicate any existing offences, and no provisions in law are being repealed or amended. The new offences are in addition to the existing law. The Attorney General has advised that any overlap with section 7(1) of the Criminal Law 1997, on incitement to commit offences, does not prevent or harm the proper functioning of either.

At this point, | want to acknowledge the efforts made in the past to introduce legislation to tackle this issue. My colleague, Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, introduced a Private Members' Bill in the Dáil along similar lines to this Bill in 2018. Two other Private Members' Bills were introduced in the meantime, directed at the specific issue of children being used in drug-related crime, for example, to transport or hold drugs on behalf of adult criminals. Similar legislation was enacted in 2017 in the State of Victoria, Australia, which made it an offence for an adult over the age of 21 to knowingly recruit a child to engage in any criminal activity punishable with a term of imprisonment of five years or more. Professor Geoffrey Shannon was the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection at the time. He recommended that Ireland should introduce similar provisions. This Bill does more to protect children from being groomed into criminal activity than either the earlier Private Members’ Bills or the Australian legislation. It will be a criminal offence to engage a child in any type of criminal activity, including but, importantly, not limited to crimes related to illegal drugs use. This low threshold has been deliberately selected to facilitate intervention before a pattern of offending can develop to the point where more serious offences are being committed and significant harm is done to the child.

lf we had adopted the approach in the Australian legislation, of setting the threshold at offences carrying a sentence of five years or more, only the most serious criminal activities would be captured by the Bill and more serious offending would have to occur for the legislation to take effect. In line with the lower threshold, the sentence is being set at five years rather than ten years as it is in Australian law.

Where a more serious offence is committed, An Garda Síochána and the DPP will still be able to use the existing provisions in law that allow them to charge the adult with the crime committed by the child, so an appropriate level of sanction will always be available. Where a child is found to have committed an offence, the appropriate criminal justice response is different than it would be if they were adults. Section 96 of the Children Act 2001 sets out the principles to be followed in the administration of justice for child offenders. A key feature is that detention is the option of last resort. In line with this principle, children are being deliberately excluded from liability for the grooming offences under this Bill in order to avoid causing any further harm to children who are likely to already be victims of grooming themselves, and to ensure that the adults who actually control the criminal activity are the ones targeted by the provisions.

As the Senators here will no doubt be well aware, the final Report of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs was launched on Thursday last, 25 January. Among other things, the citizens' assembly looked at the lived experience of young people and adults affected by drugs use, as well as their families and communities. The assembly's chairperson called out the grooming and coercion of vulnerable young people into drug-related criminal activity in his foreword to the assembly’s report. This Bill will directly address this issue by targeting those who use their influence over children to commit offences, including drug-related crime.

This Bill has been developed alongside other non-legislative measures to address child criminality, notably, the Greentown programme and additional support for youth diversion projects in their work with the Garda youth diversion programme. The Minister for Justice and I were pleased to announce last week a three-year extension to the Greentown programme so that lessons learned can be formalised and disseminated to the entire network of youth justice initiatives.

The team who manage the Greentown programme has expressed support for this Bill and particularly for the strong message that it will send out to communities that grooming children into crime is not acceptable. The Greentown programme is led by the University of Limerick with the support of my Department, and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Over the last two years, the programme has been trialling new interventions in two local areas aiming to reduce and disrupt the influence of criminal networks on children. This innovative project was recognised at the 2020 European Crime Prevention Awards and provides insights into how criminal networks attract and confine children, encouraging and coercing them to become involved in serious crime and limiting their opportunities to escape their influence. This valuable work has shown that children are being involved in criminal activity by adults in criminal networks across the State. Some of these networks are kinship-based, which means that some children are being groomed in this way by people in their own family circles.

The Greentown programme has also shown that in the majority of cases where children are not related to gang leaders the adults doing this are aged between 19 and 23 years old. At this age, and in these settings, it is likely that some of these younger adults are also victims of grooming and they are perpetuating the cycle of harm.

The Department is currently consulting with key stakeholders in youth diversion on proposals to expand the Garda youth diversion programme to include this cohort of younger adults, in order to assess the programme’s effectiveness in avoiding unnecessary criminalisation of those whose offences are at the lower end of the scale. A key support to the diversion programme is the national network of over 100 youth diversion projects. These projects provide an invaluable support to complement the work of An Garda Síochána in addressing youth crime and protecting local communities.

The projects work with an average of 3,500 to 4,000 young people aged 12 to 17 years of age across the State every year. The Government has allocated additional funding over the past two years to ensure nationwide coverage of the projects for the first time and, in budget 2024, the overall funding allocated to youth justice services increased by 10% to €33 million.

Enactment of this Bill will send a strong message to those people in our society who groom children into criminality that it is not acceptable to harm children in this way and that we are equipping our authorities with the tools needed to intervene to deal with the problem. It sends a strong message to communities that grooming children into criminal activity is not acceptable and, also, that it can be tackled. It will also give a mandate to An Garda Síochána to intervene and to take appropriate actions at local level, thereby reducing the harm being done to children in these circumstances and reducing the likelihood of offences being committed in the first place.

I look forward to the Senators' contributions in the course of this debate and I commend the Bill to the House.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

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.

Senator Diarmuid Wilson

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, to the House. I welcome this very important piece of legislation. I am taking it on behalf of my colleague, Senator Robbie Gallagher, who unfortunately is indisposed at the moment. Approximately 1,000 children under the age of 17 are constantly at risk of being recruited and used by criminal networks throughout the country, according to a national survey of Garda juvenile liaison officers, carried out in 2020. A 2019 study of drug dealing and organised crime in Dublin's south inner city found that children as young as 12 were being lured into gangs. Dr. Sean Redmond, adjunct professor of youth justice at the University of Limerick and principal investigator for the Greentown project, which I will come to in a few moments, estimated that approximately a thousand children throughout the State are engaged in, or at risk of engagement with, a criminal network. From a child protection perspective, Dr. Redmond says, these children are clearly being exploited by adults. From a law enforcement perspective they appear to commit a significantly disproportionate amount of youth-related crime.

The Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023, which is before us today, will give An Garda Síochána the power to intervene locally to prevent offences from taking place. For the first time, specific offences will be created in cases where an adult compels, coerces, induces or invites a child to engage in criminal activity. These additional powers will be on top of the provisions in current law where an adults who causes or uses a child to commit a crime can generally be found guilty as the principal offender, meaning they can be punished as though they committed the crime themselves. I welcome that, and the fact that the age limit is being set at 18. That is very important. It is distinct from the law in Australia to which the Minister of State referred, in which the age is 21 years of age. That, in my opinion, is far too high.

The Greentown project, which fed into this legislation, is a very important project in operation through the University of Limerick. I am sure Senator Gavan may elaborate more on it. The project is an evidence-informed, design-led, targeted community intervention which aims to reduce the influence of criminal networks on children. The programme’s objectives are to reduce network capability for recruiting children to commit crime and to provide an exit route for children who are already engaged or embedded in crime. The Greentown project is informed by a significant evidence base which includes multiple primary studies, evaluation findings and deliberation with international academics in the areas of organised crime and national experts in the areas of youth justice, child welfare, policing and community development.

For young people who unfortunately are recruited by these gangs, engage in criminal behaviour, find themselves before the courts and are convicted, this conviction can alter the course of their lives forever, damaging employment and educational opportunities, travel prospects, social connections and overall leading to more negative life outcomes. Unfortunately, we all know too many young people like that. I hope this piece of legislation will send a strong message to communities that grooming children into criminal activity is not acceptable and will be tackled by this legislation.

I acknowledge the efforts made in the past to introduce legislation such as this by my colleague, Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte. She introduced a Private Members’ Bill in Dáil Éireann along similar lines to this Bill in 2018. I just want to acknowledge that in this House today. As mentioned by my colleague Senator Seery Kearney, there is a terrible lack of community facilities such as playing grounds for sports, swimming pools, gymnasiums and so on in our main urban areas. Thankfully, in the countryside where I come from, we are well catered for. That is because communities can come together and fight for themselves and the space is available. Communities outside of the main urban areas are empowered to get these facilities for themselves. The space is there to provide these facilities. That space is not always available in large urban areas and that lack can lead to temptation for young people who are not engaged in extra-curricular activities and, in many cases, who are not in education beyond primary school. They just disappear. That is where I want to pay tribute to programmes such as the Garda youth diversion programme which is a successful programme. The Minister of State has responsibility for that and has travelled throughout the country visiting such programmes, encouraging the work that goes on there, the leadership and the mentoring those programmes provide.

I also acknowledge the work that is carried out by all the voluntary and community groups in these areas, the volunteers who, on a daily and nightly basis, come out to try to assist the youth of their communities, in particular. I also acknowledge the work that is carried out by such programmes as the important Youthreach programme that has been in existence for the past 34 years. It caters for young people who, for one reason or another, dropped out of mainstream education. It affords them a second chance at education, a second opportunity at life skills and a second opportunity to progress with their lives in whatever field they find their strengths in. I have been involved in that programme from the outset. It was one of the first pilot programmes set up in Cavan town. In that time, more than 2,500 young people have gone through the doors of Cavan Youthreach. The vast majority of them got an excellent opportunity which turned their lives around. They have made major contributions to the communities they found themselves in over the years since the first Youthreach opened in Cavan. That is the story throughout the country.

There are programmes to help young people and give them a second opportunity. All they need is the opportunity and the vast majority will grasp it.

I very much welcome the legislation. I hope it enjoys a speedy passage through the House. We look forward to the Minister of State’s comments at the end of the debate.

Acting Chairperson (Senator Mark Wall)

I welcome to the Visitors Gallery the young Travellers from all over Ireland with the youth service group Involve. I hope they enjoy their day with us here in Leinster House. They are guests of Senator Flynn.

Senator Paul Gavan

It is great to see our colleagues here today. They are very welcome.

Sinn Féin will be supporting this Bill. I will begin by quoting a speech made by Deputy Mark Ward last year when he was speaking on this Bill in the Dáil. He said:

We need to ensure that children are not groomed into crime and that they can ... be children - playing football, taking music lessons, hanging out with their friends and doing all of the things that children do to reach their full potential. To ensure that this happens, we need to resource and invest in our communities so they are resilient and resistant to crime. A resourced community is a safe community and a safe community is a thriving community.

We cannot say it enough publicly, to the community and to ourselves, that a resourced community is a safe community and a safe community is a thriving community. Deputy Ward's words in this regard are full of positive messages to all those involved in working with communities to make them safer and make sure that they thrive. What will enable this to happen is the provision of resources by the Government and for local government. Communities are the bedrock on which a stable and productive society is based. They are the heartbeat of the State. Investing in communities is not just a practical financial measure by the Government; it is also a psychological measure. It sends a clear message that the Government, the political parties and community representatives believe in the people who live in communities.

I emphasise all of this because before I was lucky enough to get in here, I was a SIPTU official. I represented the community sector. I saw at first hand the complete devastation caused to that sector by Government cutbacks, particularly the first Fine Gael-Labour Government. Those cutbacks have never really been restored. We saw vital community programmes completely destroyed, we saw some of the best people in those communities lose their jobs and the level of community intervention has never recovered from those cutbacks of over ten years ago. I remember campaigning against those cutbacks alongside thousands of other workers. We were never listened to. We have paid the price since then because all of us know – I could not disagree with anything Senators Wilson or Seery Kearney said – there is real and ongoing deprivation across our communities.

When we have a general election campaign - probably later this year - it will be dominated by talk of tax cuts. I wish to put on record that I do not support tax cuts. I do not support any party that will cheer on tax cuts when we have real and increasing deprivation across many of our working-class communities that has never been addressed since the savage cutbacks of ten years ago.

Believing in communities means that the Government has to use all of its State-wide resources to protect the communities from criminality. The Government needs to protect the future by means of its current actions. We cannot allow criminal gangs to continue to be such a scourge on our communities. Older criminals using children for criminal activity in disadvantaged areas is not new. Over the past few years, however, there has been a noticeable increase in this type of activity. Young people are being targeted by older, experienced criminals. Children are being groomed by these unscrupulous criminals. I know from speaking to victims of this crime already that they are terrified. Many of these young people are absolutely terrified because not only are they being threatened by these criminals, the criminals are threatening to attack members of their family - their mothers and sisters. Theirs is a reign of terror. Of course, young people are vulnerable to the superficial trappings offered to them by criminals, such as flashy cars, new runners, quick money in their pockets and the false status of being a so-called somebody by absolute nobodies who take away the goodness in the community and offer nothing but grief and heartache in return.

Criminal gangs have a foothold in our communities, but it would be wrong to say they are running particular areas; they are not. The best people from all backgrounds are the leaders of the communities. They and the Garda know that organised crime is not welcome in our estates, villages and cities. The Garda and communities working together can impact on the presence of criminal gangs. In Limerick, where I live, gardaí are very open with us by saying they are strapped when it comes to resources. They do not have the numbers they had even a few years ago. In the most vulnerable estates, they do not see gardaí often enough. I am not blaming the Garda because it simple does not have the bodies.

I say all this because while we support this Bill, unless we see some kind of in-depth thinking and comprehensive approach, we are only fooling ourselves if we are saying that it will tackle the issue. It will not unless we see that overarching Government approach, which, frankly, we have not seen to date. We believe the Government must give the Garda the tools to be able to tackle organised crime.

It is no coincidence that some of the most disadvantaged communities are those most affected by crime. That disadvantage does not happen by chance rather it is a result of Government policy, cuts to community-based services, which I referenced previously, and eroding community resilience. Is that what the Government wants? Is this a ploy by it to weaken the communities because they are viewed as a political threat to the status quo? We take a different view. We believe strong communities have a vital role to play in helping to build a fair and just society for all. If it gets into government, Sinn Féin will get back to basics. We will invest in community development, build community resilience and strengthen communities.

While Sinn Féin is happy to support the progress of this Bill to the next stage, there are some potential issues we need to examine during the pre-legislative scrutiny process. One has to do with the age of the recruit of the child into criminality. The Bill defines it as age 18 while other jurisdictions set the age at 21. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission expressed concern about this age limit because of the guideline protections of the child justice system.

Another potential issue of concern, which has been referenced already, is family involvement in recruiting a child family member into criminal activity. Despicable though this is, it does happen. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission noted that the complex issues that arise due to family ties are often overlooked in this Bill, for example, involving the child in the prosecution of a family, the use of testimony by the child against the parent or sibling and the feeling of guilt a child might feel if a family member is imprisoned. Children are often recruited through friends and peers.

The length of sentence outlined in the Bill also needs to be debated. Is five years long enough for a hardened criminal who will wilfully use a child for their own benefit? Other areas have sentences of up to ten years. Criminals need to know they will pay a high price for grooming.

There is also the scourge of drug debt intimidation in the communities. Through fear, families are forced to pay this debt. Deputy Ward addressed this intimidation in his Coercion of a Minor (Misuse of Drugs Amendment) Bill 2022. That Bill is designed to deter criminals from using children to sell or supply drugs. Communities have only known one thing, which is the war on drugs. However, this so-called war is not working. The war on drugs is actually a war on working-class communities. It has led to the criminalisation of vast numbers of our young people. As a society we need to move towards a health-led approach rather than a judicial approach. It may reduce the number of young people getting involved in crime.

I started by quoting Deputy Ward. I will finish as I started by repeating his words, namely: “A resourced community is a safe community and a safe community is a thriving community.” Let us see those resources finally go to those communities that so badly deserve them.

Minister of State at the Department of Justice (Deputy James Browne)

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.

Question put and agreed to.

Cuireadh an Seanad ar fionraí ar 3.45 p.m. agus cuireadh tús leis arís ar 5 p.m.

Sitting suspended at 3.45 p.m. and resumed at 5 p.m.

Seanad Éireann debate - Wednesday, 31 Jan 2024

Criminal Justice (Engagement of Children in Criminal Activity) Bill 2023: Second Stage

Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 31 Jan 2024