Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-12
============================================================

Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

It is drawn to the attention of the authorities when there is an unaccompanied minor. They could be 17, 18, 19 or 20. They could be 15 or 14. I put it to the Deputy that people acted in good faith here and with the best intentions. What happened to that poor young child was horrific and shocking. There is no question about that. All I am simply saying is that the immediate rush to judgment and to attempt to blame is, I think, wrong.
To respond to Deputy Mark Ward, I will talk to the Minister about Balgaddy. I think the Deputy raised it with the Commissioner. I think the Commissioner will act on that. The Deputy has properly raised the concerns of the community in terms of the need for visibility of gardaí but also the open drug scenarios that he has outlined and articulated.
Again, I think Deputy Quaide's language was wrong. He used the phrase that I had "congratulated" the Independent Ireland-----

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-12