Demonising kids is doomed to failure

I have complete sympathy for any shop, business or private house plagued by gangs of unruly young people.
It is a total stressfest to be confronted with a bunch of teenagers transformed from their usual self-absorption to a hungry pack intent on entertaining themselves with their own bravado at the expense of the hapless local or passer-by.
So the arrival of the new 'Mosquito' device will no doubt tempt a lot of people who suffer these gangs. In case you haven't heard about it, the Mosquito is a device that emits a high pitched noise that can only be heard by people under the age of 25 or so. After around ten or fifteen minutes the noise becomes so annoying that the young people move away.
It’s a brilliant technical triumph. It also represents complete social failure.
It means we are now treating young people as a form of vermin to be hunted away.
But away where? Where are these kids going to go?
The reason that kids gather around shops is because they have nowhere else to go in order to hang out. After being at school all day, a venue provided by the state, there is nowhere they can gather for free. The only places open are restaurants and pubs. Practically all leisure centres have entry charges of some sort.
So although the local parade of shops can solve their own problems by installing the Mosquito device, the community is still left with the problem of bored youngsters with nothing to do. Hunting them away from the lit up areas might well backfire.
We have been down this road before. In the 1970s and 1980s many shops and businesses put up shutters in order to protect themselves from anti-social behaviour. Commercial areas became like war zones as the downward spiral encouraged graffiti and vandalism, and drove people away.
So when local authorities, residents groups and business associations sat down to improve their areas they realised that the shutters would have to go. The lesson was, and is, that you can’t run away from problems and that if you allow the environment to be created by anti-social behaviour, then everyone suffers.
I don’t want to sound pious about this, but the only long-term solution to teenage nuisance is to engage with them. Treating them as outcasts is only going to further alienate them.
I’ve no doubt that the solution to some of the nastier gangs has to a law and order response. Rather in the way that some people who are interested in photography or jam making, say, will find each other out – delinquents can be similarly sociable. You can end up with a gang whose common interest is in creating as much misery as they can. But even in this case, they are unlikely to be reformed by high pitched beeping sounds.
And in most cases what we have are boisterous local kids who are growing up and being loud and annoying about it. Which is pretty much like we all were.
I run some young hurling teams from the ages of around ten to sixteen. Yes, the kids would drive you to distraction sometimes. But mostly they respond positively when provided with stimulation (in this case pucking a sliotar about) combined with respect and some discipline. Generally, they are great kids well worth while engaging with.
It annoys me that these children would be targeted by universal crowd control devices such as the Mosquito. But, more than that, the whole philosophy is all wrong and is a sticking plaster for the failure of our communities to operate as communities.
We need to know our local neighbours and their kids so that we can have leverage with them. So that we can have expectations of them and responsibly for them.
If we don’t, a little beeping device isn’t going to cure the problem.

Still no need to go nuclear

The nuclear debate is hotting up again. The ICTU has thrown its weight in saying that the debate should be opened up - meaning that nuclear power should be considered.
Dublin has been living with nuclear power for many years. The Wylfa reactor on the island of Anglesey is a mere 70 miles from O'Connell Street. That's as near as Newry, Cavan, Athlone or Wexford. The planned 1970's nuclear station in Carnsore Point was further away. So it's close. But still out of mind.
I don't have any hang-ups about nuclear power. If it solves our problems then lets use it. However, my opposition to nuclear is based on just that basis - it won't solve our problems and it's unnecessary.
I have three main problems with nuclear power.
Firstly, if our new nuclear power station was the last one to be built, we'd be laughing. It would sort us out into the future. However, the problem is that uranium is in the same basic position as oil - it's running out.
At the moment nuclear power provides around 6 per cent of world electricity. Clearly, to make a dent in future energy demand the number of nuclear reactors would have to increase by at least fivefold. At the present use there is just decades left of commercial uranium supply. You do the maths.
The nuclear industry says that we will get better at finding uranium as it becomes more valuable. That's a polite way of saying 'become more desperate'. Can we build a future on these terms?
Secondly, what are we going to do with the waste? All of the waste produced since nuclear power started in the 1950s is being stored in temporary facilities. The long-term solution is to bury the waste in deep underground depositories.
How many of these are there in the world? None. Not one.
When they are built they will have to be minded and protected for at least the next 10,000 years. I am at a total loss as to how the real cost of nuclear power can be calculated given this long-term commitment.
Thirdly, pretty much anybody who can generate nuclear power can make nuclear weapons. If you don't believe this ask yourself why the Americans don't want Iran to have nuclear power. Why are they closing the North Korean reactor?
I probably don't sound that objective about nuclear power. But I'm a realist. At present we are mortgaging our future for a carbon economy. Nuclear would be a better alternative than that. That's true.
But that doesn't have to be. North Wales also holds the alternative as well. Just 40 miles down the road from Wylfa is Dinorwig Power Station which is one of the largest pumped storage power stations in the world. It can supply 1700MW, bigger than any power station in Ireland. What Dinorwig does is store electricity by pumping water from a lower reservoir to an upper one and then releasing the water to generate electricity when it is needed.
If we had just two or three of these stations (we have one already at Turlough Hill) we could power our electricity system entirely by wind on land and off-shore, with practically no emissions, no waste and no danger. And then there's biofuels, wave power, solar power, conservation, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Those who say there is no better alternative to nuclear power are simply wrong.