Young people are being groomed into the drug trade "every day", a north Dublin councillor has warned.
Councillor Noeleen Reilly, who represents the Ballymun-Finglas area, said she wants "severe penalties" for anyone who grooms youngsters to get involved in crime.
A parliamentary question by Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Department of Justice to supply the number of people who have been convicted for grooming young people into the drug trade.
The Department responded saying that while adults can be prosecuted for a crime a child has committed if the child had been incited to do that by the adult, there is "currently no mechanism in law for explicitly recognising the damage done to the child."
Councillor Reilly has called for "immediate action" to be taken on the issue.
She told Dublin Live: "It's shocking. It's something that really upsets me because I do see it every day.
"Where I live, there are young people dealing all of the time. It's very, very sad because I would have known them growing up and they're really good young people with the potential for great lives and they're just groomed into the drug trade.
"A lot of the time, it's obviously the bigger guys, but because they're using underage people, they know they're not going to get convicted or they know there's going to be very little penalties.
"These young people get dragged in and within a matter of days or weeks they're told that they owe huge amounts of money and it's so difficult for any of them to get out of the situation that they're in.
"It's just very sad. It's child abuse, and with any other forms of child abuse we'd all be up in arms and yet this is allowed ."
Councillor Reilly said that young people are "being dragged into a life of crime".
"I want severe penalties for people who are involved in grooming of young children. It's mainly young men that are the victims but it does happen to young girls as well.
"It's not good enough in this day and age that no one has been convicted. There needs to be an immediate change in approach in the laws in terms of actually convicting people of this.
"It's not going to stop, young people are not going to stop being used and they're just dragging them into a life of crime."
Councillor Reilly feels the issue has been neglected because it predominantly affects working class areas.
"It's working class areas that this affects. Perhaps if this was happening in areas like Foxrock or Donnybrook and there was young people hanging around dealing all of the time, maybe there would be action.
"But it's in communities like Ballymun, Finglas, Ballyfermot, the north inner city and those communities that are already neglected.
"I think that if it was affecting more of the affluent areas then we would have seen action already."
Councillor Reilly said that as well as legal action, community based work could also help tackle the issue of child grooming.
"In Poppintree Youth, in Ballymun, we applied for funding from Dublin City Council for a specific programme called Roots, which was targeted at young people involved in street dealing.
"We got a small amount of funding for it but it was very successful in keeping young people off the streets.
"I think a very targeted approach at these young people through that type of programme could be of assistance as well."
Responding to Deputy Thomas Pringle's parliamentary question, the Department of Justice said tackling this issue was a "key priority for Government".
They wrote: "Diverting young people away getting involved in criminal activity is a key priority for the Government and the exploitation of young people and children is a particular concern.
"While an adult may be prosecuted for a crime which has been committed by a child who has been incited to do so by the adult, there is currently no mechanism in law for explicitly recognising the damage done to the child.
"The Programme for Government commits to developing a law which would take account of this and penalise adults for the exploitation and harm done to the child in such cases."
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