Paul KeenanToday’s youth feel ‘discarded’ by society
Priests from challenging communities in different parts of Ireland were consistent in describing to The Irish Catholic a generation of youngsters who feel they have no stake in austerity Ireland and for whom, crime is an answer to their situations.
Fr Gerry O’Connor, a priest in the Dublin suburb of Ballyfermot where six-year-old Sean Scully received serious injuries when he was struck in the neck by a bullet said “there has been a devaluing of human life” in recent years.
“About three years ago I began to hear from teens about where they could get guns, and hire them for 24 or 48 hours,” he told this newspaper. “There is now a ready availability of guns matched with the constant talk of revenge and taking down your enemy.”
Summing up the profile of youngsters now given readily to violence, Fr O’Connor said: “I think there’s a generation that thinks there’s very little future for them, with no place in society for them. They get sucked into crime and it’s a spiral for them into a very macho, aggressive culture.”
Failing
Fr Tony O’Riordan, SJ, of Moyross in Limerick said, “we are failing these children”.
“Part of me gets frustrated with the focus on historic neglect, when the state of care for our vulnerable children in Ireland today is appalling. Kids getting into the drugs trade today are a direct consequence of that.”
Fr Peter McVerry, who has long experience in working with the most marginalised in Dublin, said of youngsters now involved in crime, and not least in drug dealing: “They feel this is the way things are and that they have no prospects in life, no future.
“The only way for them to get ahead is to sell drugs.”
The clerics were consistent, too, in stressing that only early intervention in the circumstances of vulnerable youths can prevent an inevitable progress to crime.
“If we intervene as early as possible with quality supports we could turn so many around,” Fr O’Riordan insisted.