Dr. Barry Cullen:

I agree totally with the Deputy. I was raised in Ballyfermot and I know a lot of people who were raised at the same time and did not do well in the system. Family is definitely a huge factor, among others. We do a lot of research into drug problems, but we do not do enough into protection and preventative factors. We need to take a long-term perspective and ask what we need to know about what protects young people from risk in their communities. What do we need to do in the long term to turn it around for others? I recall working in the Ana Liffey Project many years ago. Mr. Broderick was there too, but long before that. We used to have the view that we perhaps needed to look at changing the children of the children who were coming in with their parents, because a long-term perspective was needed. We are constantly looking for immediate solutions to problems.

We are never going to get them, but we take a long-term perspective, like the investment that was done in community facilities and services that suddenly stopped when the recession came and was never reinstated. The health budget, for example, has escalated since the recession ended, but the budget for drug services and community and youth services stayed at the same amounts they were at in 2009. That was a reflection of policy decisions. Dr. Lambert mentioned something like €4 million being allocated for this year. The accumulated deficit in some of those services is huge. If we want to rectify the situation with regard to the withdrawal of money from front-line services in 2008 and 2009, we are talking about a huge amount of money before we talk about an increase of €4 million and so on. It is about priorities at the end of the day.