Bríd Smith: Fireworks crisis in working-class communities

From Algoathe Coorheirlech, first of all I want to start by acknowledging all of that Sinn Fein, acknowledging their motion, the absolute terror and fear and nuisance that's been put on communities throughout the country with the absolute flooding of fireworks, particularly in working class communities. And I'm saying what many people say to me tonight and I don't say this out of any prejudice but out of something that's very obvious. If this was happening in Fox Rock or Dublin 4 it would have been sorted out by now. The fact that it is happening predominantly in working class communities speaks volumes. It speaks about the sort of containment policy inside working class areas that dominates every aspect of this and previous governments' attitude to services that are needed at a local level and I know you're shaking your head Minister but I do think you have to answer a lot of questions to our communities about why it is that the Gardaí don't respond to their calls, that they're never seen on the streets, that despite repeated call into stations physically and by phone call they do not respond, they do not respond and that needs an answer and I don't fully accept the argument from Sinn Fein that it's all about community Gardaí because even in your preamble the deputies say that the number of Gardaí assigned to the Dublin Metropolitan Region in August 2020 is at 4,059 and remains below the 2010 figure of 4,160 which is just 1 over 100 in the difference. Balance that against the argument I'm going to make about resources that don't go into young people, that aren't restored in our communities to focus on where it's happening. Because I think what we're looking at is a containment as I say in working class areas, a flooding of those areas with excess fireworks that have emanated from the Covid period where they weren't being bought and used for celebration. But instead, now that the market has them to get rid of them, they're dumping them in working class areas. There seems to be no attempt and maybe you could explain a bit more in detail about Operation Tombola that we keep hearing of. In the Minister's speech he said that it's all about combating the importation and sale of fireworks. Well, we don't see any combat of the importation and sale of fireworks. They are being sold everywhere. Last night an 18-year-old Ballyfermot young man had a finger blown off. I understand he's about 18 years of age. But the kids that are letting off these fire workers are frequently much, much younger at 10, 12 and 14 years of age. And I believe that the stuff has been sold to them for a song, literally for a song. And despite that, somebody must be making money because they're not doing it for the good of their health. And clearly there's an abundance of explosives on the market. And for me, I think the resources of the Gardaí, they make political decisions where to allocate those resources. And the question is not to put a motion before the House to say they should be recruiting an extra 800 per year, that we don't have enough, but there are political decisions being made. And I think this motion reads on its own, very imbalanced. And despite the deputies saying that they're not having a go at young people, it actually does read like we're having a go at young people. And I just want to use the opportunity to talk for a few minutes about that issue. Because I have tried both at the COVID committee to have special sessions on how COVID has impacted on our youth. I have raised it at topical issues, I think three times last week and each time been refused, as did other deputies. And I think it's about time we had a full and frank conversation of what's going on in working class areas with young people. There's a study done called Generation Pandemic. It was done by MyRock Research, a reputable research company. And they have shown that through surveying youth workers and 700 youth groups, after school and sports clubs, that half of all youth workers believe that the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown will have a massive impact on the mental health of our young people. 47% say that kids are behind in their studies. 21% of kids they believe will not return to normal schooling. In another survey carried out by the National Youth Council of Ireland, they are talking to kids who they are surveying and they say that 53% of them already have mental health issues. 35% are falling behind in schools, 39% experience isolation and one in five are living with family conflict. And you combine that with overcrowding, where young boys and girls are grown up sharing the same bedroom, not just with their sisters, but sometimes with their aunties and their mothers because of overcrowding in housing. Young kids are couchsurfing, the homelessness among young people is growing, not to mention the level of unemployment among youth, which is now at 45.4%. And youth are particularly impacted by the drastic, draconian measures where their unemployment payment was slashed and never restored. So you have inequality in the way the social services deal with them, you have inequality in housing, you have inequality in education, and then you look at the cuts to the youth services themselves. They were slashed by a third in 2010 by the previous Fine Gael Labour government. And that cut has never been fully restored. Some of it has been restored, but here's the catch. It's been restored through a mechanism called value for money, which is basically a neoliberal economic measurement, which could have a very serious detrimental impact on youth services and indeed on all community and addiction services. And I'm just talking about the youth here tonight. It's about trying to measure everything in terms of a neoliberal framework and not on the real actions and outcomes for young people. So it will have serious problems in trying to deliver outcomes for young people, particularly when you combine that with what they call the generation pandemic and the impact that that is having on them. So you will have, or your government will have a submission from the National Youth Council, and they're looking for serious engagement of more youth workers in our communities, and we absolutely need them. They can't take young people inside all sorts of discos, dancing clubs, boxing clubs, youth clubs that will be open for drop-in centres, cafes. They're all shut because of the COVID restrictions. They don't have enough resources to do outreach with them in any meaningful way. And yet we seem to be loading the blame on them. I'm not saying they're angels by no manner or means. I know many of them who live around me. But the solution is not to impose more Gardaí on society. The solution is that the Gardaí, a new minister as the Minister for Justice, need to make decisions that don't have that class bias of containment inside working class areas. And fundamentally, the most important thing to do right now is to deploy Gardaí to stop the importation and sale of these fireworks. If there wasn't the supply, there wouldn't be the use. And that's a very, very obvious statement to make. The other thing I want to talk about is the voluntarism inside the youth services. There's a huge amount of voluntarism. And only for that voluntarism and those really magnificent workers who do football and all sorts of things with the kids, there'll be absolutely nothing out there. So it's a serious deficit and it really needs a bit of time in this house and it needs to be looked at, combined with the youth unemployment levels rising and the overcrowding and lack of housing that I mentioned earlier on. I just want to say this in conclusion. When I moved into Ballyfermot in the early 90s, there was a very serious riot in a place called Gallantstown. And at that time, I don't think Gallantstown had a youth centre. It didn't have a school. It didn't have a community centre. And due to sensible intervention post the riot, we do have those things. Mind you, the area still only has one shop, no post office, no cafe, no pharmacy, nothing. There's nothing, no community facilities in that area. And so the containment issue is a real one. And unless policy decisions are made to develop those on an equal level as with other areas, then it will continue to happen. But the point I really want to make is, in those days that the riots happened, Gallantstown was flooded with Gardaí. I never saw as many Gardaí in my life. There was Gardaí and there was Saracens and there was all sorts of modern equipment. But that didn't solve the problem. Gardaí in and of their own are not the solution. In fact, the increased demand by Sinn Fein to increase Gardaí by an 800 a year is not going to be the solution. The political decisions that are made by your office in how you deploy Gardaí has to be seriously questioned. And the Gardaí have a lot to answer for. In conversation with a recently appointed superintendent in my area, he made the comment that the solution to this is investment in youth services. It is that intervention. Gardaí going in, arresting 10, 12, 14 year olds, throwing them in a cell and then bringing them home does not get rid of it. So let's deal with the supply of these explosives. Let's go after the bowsies who are flooding the streets with them. And let's interject in the communities where they need the resources and recognise that the severe austerity cuts have impacted disproportionately on working class areas and continue to do so. And the policies must change. Processing and analyse all the assistance of the people who have come. Just like the damages that they want to listen to, all the losses that they aren't collected over and over again. Just putting out the people who are controlling the schools and can't understand the пережire, the challenges that they don't make up your own are not the ones that they don't make up the application. I will do it in the main way. All the other questions can be found. I can't wait to see. I'm going after this. The way I can find out. Majority is a peer-to- Promoteer. What is this? I am going after this? It's been a theological word for. For the most part of this session is a speaker that I can open the up-to-led. I can open some places for European companies that are still not at once in my office.