Minister of State at the Department of Justice (Deputy James Browne): I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to discuss the progress and impact of the youth justice strategy and our youth justice interventions. Our approach to youth justice in Ireland, informed by international standards, is that children in conflict with the law are still children. They are entitled to dignity, respect and access to services that will promote reintegration into their communities and wider society. Youth justice interventions are not about young people avoiding punishment or consequences. They are about recognising that many young people who stray from the proper path simply need support and direction to get their lives back on track. That is why preventing offending behaviour and diverting children and young people from further involvement with the criminal justice system are at the heart of what we do.

The youth justice strategy 2021-27 provides a developmental framework to address key ongoing challenges, as well as new and emerging issues in the youth justice area. The focus of the strategy is still very much on children in contact with the justice system, but it also examines more closely why a proportion of young offenders go on to become adult offenders and how this can be better addressed. In that way, the strategy examines how youth justice policy might be more closely aligned to other child and youth policies and towards the promotion of community and local development. In the same way that our approach to community safety now focuses on multi-agency collaboration, the same principle applies to youth justice.

I cannot stress enough the importance of bringing together all the relevant agencies and programmes, including schools, to ensure we provide a holistic response to the needs of children and young people at risk.

My Department has a dedicated youth justice partnership with the internationally-recognised Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes and Practice, REPPP, team at the University of Limerick, which is guiding the development of programmes and practices within the framework of the youth justice strategy. This includes the REPPP action research project, which aims to co-design and implement new guidance on effective practitioner and young person relationships in youth diversion projects, YDPs. This has been done using 16 YDP sites nationwide and involving them in a trial process over two years. REPPP is also providing dedicated research and expert support, including best practice support for the nationwide project network to roll out expanded and additional YDPs to ensure fully national coverage.

As Deputies will be aware, our network of youth diversion projects across the country acts as a vital support to the statutory Garda youth diversion programme. The youth justice strategy commits to the broadening and deepening of services provided by YDPs and acknowledges the importance of early intervention and family support programmes for children at risk, as well as access to appropriate education, training and youth services. I have seen first-hand the positive impact these projects have on the young people they welcome through their doors and the wider communities in which they are based. This is why I am ambitious for the future when it comes to our youth diversion projects.

My intention is to develop this service so that it is available to every child in the State who could benefit from it, through an ongoing expansion of existing services and the foundation of new projects where necessary. We currently have over 100 YDPs in operation and the intention of this year’s justice plan, under the youth justice strategy, is to provide full geographic availability of youth diversion services by the end of 2023. YDPs engage with young people through a range of supports, including education, employment support, social enterprise initiatives and personal development supports such as mentoring and personal development activities.

YDPs have traditionally worked with young people under the supervision of juvenile liaison officers, JLOs. The youth justice strategy formalises a wider mandate for the projects, including undertaking early intervention work with younger children identified as being on a trajectory to later involvement in crime and anti-social behaviour, providing family support for the families of participants, supporting schools to retain YDP participants in the education system and working with harder-to-reach young people on an outreach basis. Young people in this last category include those deemed not suitable for the statutory Garda youth diversion programme.

Where young people in this category are before the courts the probation service may have a mandate to work with them, but otherwise there may be little service provision in communities that can respond effectively to their needs and the challenges they pose. It has been estimated that there may be some 1,000 young people in the State who are prolific offenders and responsible for half of all youth crime. These children and young people most involved in crime and anti-social behaviour are very often known to a range of other services and present with complex needs and behaviours. Individual public services in the youth, family and social inclusion areas cope well with more straightforward cases but can struggle to deal with this type of complexity, especially in the cases of young people who do not engage.

My Department is working with colleagues in all other relevant Departments and agencies at national and local levels in six potential pilot areas to develop a joint commissioning approach to implement the no wrong door principle to ensure there is a cohesive response by public services to this group of young people. The pilot will be supported by the REPPP team in the University of Limerick. Essentially, the idea is that we will map the availability of current services in each of these areas, map the target group of young people in the area, identify the gaps in necessary services and bring all relevant statutory and community voluntary services together in an integrated response to the needs and challenges identified. I will announce further details of how the pilots will operate later in the year.

In budget 2023, I secured a further €2.5 million in funding for youth justice services, increasing the total budget allocation for youth diversion projects and other youth justice projects to just over €30 million. Every cent invested in building better outcomes for young people and diverting them away from the criminal justice system pays back in spades. This funding is being deployed with the assistance of the best available research and expert evidence to keep young people away from crime. Our YDPs and the diversion programme have proven to be very successful in improving outcomes for young people and offering guidance and support for their families. We need to keep building on this work.

I recently launched an extensive evaluation report on the YDPs, which we will utilise to develop our understanding of the structure, conduct and impacts of YDPs. I was pleased to see that the evaluation acknowledged many of the existing strengths of our YDPs, including a strong alignment between our youth justice policy and the objectives of individual YDPs. The people working in our YDPs were found to be experienced and highly qualified and they reported strong levels of satisfaction in their work. Key relationships, such as those between youth justice workers and juvenile liaison officers, are strong across the board and it is positive to see this being the case. The report also found that the range of interventions offered by YDPs continues to be responsive to the diverse and complex needs of individuals, their families and local communities. Perhaps most importantly, it is clear that the positive impacts of YDPs are being felt by participants, families and our communities. I commend the tireless efforts of everyone involved in the YDPs for the terrific work they do, which really makes a difference to the lives of the young people and the communities they work in.

We all want our communities to be safe places in which people can live, work and bring up their families. Youth justice interventions are not about avoiding punishment or consequences. This is about dignity and respect. It is about recognising that many young people who do stray from the proper path simply need support and direction to get their lives back on track. It is about ensuring young people can make better life decisions and about giving them a chance. I strongly believe that by improving outcomes for young people at risk of a life of criminality, we can make a real and long-term difference to the quality of life of these young people and their whole communities.

Deputy Mark Ward: Youth justice and the right for our young people to be young people are priorities for how this State should operate. Every child and young person deserves the right to reach their full potential. I have said this often in the Chamber and it is true concerning mental health and also in youth justice. Young people are our future and we must invest in them.

A troubling trend prevalent in organised crime for some time now has been the grooming of minors into criminality. Criminals offer a lifestyle of flashy clothes and quick money to young people, whom they use in the sale and running of drugs. Let me be clear that these criminals are nobodies and they suck the lifeblood of young people from our communities. They do not run our communities. Our communities are run by hardworking and decent people. Our communities, however, have been let down by successive governments through a lack of funding and low Garda resourcing. Our young people in these communities are being left behind as a result.

Sinn Féin has long pointed to community resilience as being paramount in the prevention of crime in our communities. The lack of investment by the Government is directly facilitating crime to take place. My Sinn Féin colleagues and I have put forward several items of legislation to tackle crime in our communities. For example, Deputies Martin Kenny, Denise Mitchell and I introduced the Coercion of a Minor (Misuse of Drugs Amendment) Bill 2022 last year. This proposed legislation would make it a stand-alone offence for criminals to engage young people in drug-related crimes with a maximum penalty of ten years. We must be tough on those who groom young people into engaging in crime.

Young people engaged in criminality should have to face the appropriate justice. In the case of minor offences, though, they should be diverted away from the justice system. I stress the minor offences aspect. We are in favour of the Garda YDPs. Consideration should be given to extending the age limit eligibility for the diversion programmes from 18 to 25. I know the Government is considering extending this age limit to 24. To be consistent with other areas, and I refer in this context to the future of mental healthcare, as outlined in the Sharing the Vision policy, which states that care for young people should be extended to the age of 25, I believe the same should be the case with youth diversion. We need to see this uniform approach.

Research has shown that people in this age group are vulnerable to being groomed into crime as they have often been exposed to criminal activity as minors. Those aged 18 to 25 make up the highest percentage of the prison population. This tells me that young people are being let down as children and then being let down again as they become young adults. Extending the age for eligibility for diversion programmes to 25 could reduce the numbers of people in prison, which are already overcrowded. This change could keep our young people in our communities and give them every opportunity to contribute positively to our society.

I referred to community resilience....

[For the full debate, click this link to the Oireachtas website]