The General Scheme of the Criminal Justice (Exploitation of children in the commission of offences) Bill 2020 (‘General Scheme’) was published by the Department of Justice on 15 January 2021.2 The Commission notes that the Joint Committee on Justice has now concluded its pre-legislative scrutiny of this General Scheme and has published its report. 

The General Scheme seeks to address, discourage and protect against the grooming, recruiting and exploitation of children into criminal activity by adults. It is in line with the commitment in the ‘Programme for Government – Our Shared Future’ to criminalise adults who groom children to commit crimes. The Commission notes that the General Scheme will ‘complement’ the ongoing Greentown project and other research, which has focused on examining and addressing the involvement of children in criminal networks in Ireland. 

There is an increasing trend in adults targeting children to carry out criminal acts on their behalf, with the evidence indicating that 1,000 children in Ireland who are involved in more serious and prolific offending may be caught up in local crime networks. In particular, research has reported that the Diversion Programme and court system appear to have been ’routinely gamed‘ by criminal networks, and that children, often below the age of criminal responsibility and with multiple vulnerabilities and complexities, are groomed into participation in criminal activity. Europol has also identified that the drug distribution networks in Ireland involve a lower tier of highly disadvantaged young people generally involved in bullying, assaulting, stealing, vandalising, and spreading fear on behalf of networks, as well as a middle tier of young people typically engaged in high-risk, low-reward activities, such as transporting, holding or dealing drugs, carrying guns, and conducting shootings, beatings and serious intimidation.