In broad strokes, I welcome this Bill and the debate in the Chamber on it, be it on childcare places or the Bill itself. Today I want to focus on two points, namely, the duty to co-operate and the establishment of the committee. For the past couple of months, I have had my eyes opened in Drogheda. I normally visit schools on a weekly basis. Most recently, before Christmas, I visited three schools where it was highlighted to me that children of seven years of age were coming in high on drugs - not high on life; high on drugs. Principals pointed out to me the immense pressure they are under trying to keep the children safe and away from their peers - teenagers who are grooming them and turning them into drug mules. Schools are supposed to be areas of safety, which protect the children, lift them up and give them the start of a good life. They should not be facing these pressures. In a lot of cases these children are coming from homes where there is addiction, where the mother or the grandmother or the absent father is not there to facilitate and help them, to protect them and to give them the guidance and care that they need. We need to step in where this is failing. In Drogheda we have The Red Door Project, which is an excellent service. It helps people with addictions yet it has not got the funding for outreach programmes. We have the wonderful Connect Family Resource Centre in Drogheda and the Redeemer Family Resource Centre in Dundalk, both of which go out into the communities. The communities themselves offer great assistance to many families but they cannot do it alone. I have always said that it needs to go from top to bottom and bottom to top. It has to be a unified approach. We talk about Tusla and An Garda Síochána. I have to say the gardaí in County Louth have been exceptional. They have had to face criminal organisations over the past number of years, and they have been excellent at bringing these people to justice and achieving convictions. However, we always know that when we lob off the head of a snake another head grows in its place. The pressure is continuous. The pressure on resources is continuous. The gardaí are there to bring these people to justice but they cannot be there 24 hours a day. When I am out and about at events, the gardaí are always there, they are always helping, and they are always listening. However, the biggest complaint I hear is that one hand does not speak to the other hand. That is why in this Bill I am really heartened to see there is going to be a duty to co-operate. I regret that has to be put on a statutory footing and that all of these bodies need to be pressurised and legally put on a statutory footing in order to talk to each other because common sense would say that to combat a problem everybody should be brought to the table. We had that in Drogheda. We had the Drogheda implementation board from 2021 until December 2024 where we saw that first hand. We should see it as a test model for other places. I am a big fan of the Greentown Project in Limerick. It is not about one Department. It is not about one body. It is about bringing all the Departments and bodies together, including the communities, and getting to the heart of these communities to show these young children who are being used as drug mules or drug dealers. I said it this morning, I said it yesterday and I said it to the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, before Christmas that I was at a conference in Drogheda at which I told the average age of a drug mule is now between seven and ten years of age. The average age of a child to be used as a drug dealer is between ten and 12 years of age. I found that absolutely horrific. I was aware that teenagers were being groomed and used but the very idea that these teenagers are now so au fait with the procedures and processes of these criminal activities that they are in a position to get their claws into young children as young as seven years of age is absolutely unacceptable for a society. Like a lot of people, I did not expect to hear that information when I went into those schools. I believe a lot of people would find that difficult to accept, never mind digest, this sort of information. The duty to co-operate will be fundamental to ensure we can make some effective progress in protecting our children. It is absolutely essential. I really welcome the establishment of a committee. However, a committee is only as good as the people on it and the resources and powers given to it. This committee is very welcome but it cannot be a talking shop. It cannot be a committee that meets a couple of times a year, which goes out and visits a few communities, comes back, puts a report together and puts it on a shelf. This cannot be a data collecting activity which gathers dust. It has to be effective. When we have put agencies like Cúan in place, we have seen how effective they can be and how they reach out to the different organisations. Indeed, Women's Aid Dundalk recently received €6.5 million for new beds. That is hugely welcome. It shows that when there is a committee or an agency with proper oversight, proper powers and proper funding, we can achieve something. In the times we are living in, we are facing so many threats left, right and centre. Today it is AI, tomorrow it is Grok and who know what it will be next week. We genuinely do not know but we have to prepare, and we have to be there for our children right from the beginning. As I said before, we cannot let these people get their claws into our children.

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