CHILDREN as young as four are showing signs of troubled behavioural tendencies in crime-ridden Southill, Limerick, the local parish priest has warned. Unless a multi-agency action plan is urgently put in place, Fr Pat Hogan said yesterday, toddlers will be on the pathway to a violent subculture — even before they enter primary school.
His comments came days after Limerick’s most senior garda said children who are not being controlled by their parents are being increasingly lured into the city’s feud gangs.
Fr Hogan said child delinquency in Southill is now at crisis point.
“When you see children as young as four showing they have problems, we are in big trouble, ” he said.
“In 1982 when President [Mary] McAleese was a reporter with RTÉ she did a report from Southill in which she referred to the growing army of alienated young children waiting to be called into the criminal world. Today that is ever more true and tragically [it’s] much worse.”
Chief Superintendent Willie Keane, head of the Limerick garda division, spoke earlier this week at a meeting of Limerick’s joint policing committee about the growing problem of children being lured into criminal gangs.
At Limerick District Court yesterday a boy who was found with a powerful Magnum handgun when he was 14 was put on probation for 12 months.
Fr Hogan said one only has to look at statistics for Southill to see the scale of the problem facing the community.
“Up to 45% drop out out of school before they are 15. We are talking about children dropping out the minute they finish primary school and even before that. Of the tenants in O’Malley Park, 42% are single parents,” Fr Hogan said.
Some he said have support from their own families
“But many of these are young girls who have difficult, lonely lives with no support and are left on their own.”
Fr Hogan said a determined multi-agency approach must be launched in Southill to deal with the growing problem of troubled young children.
He said: “There has to be very early intervention in the first three years of life, otherwise studies show that a child can get into a troubled and violent mindset due to the environment they are being brought up in even before they reach primary school.”
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