I once taught a child who came to school with a burst lip and a black eye. He had been involved in a run-in with some older boys and came out the worst of it.
I asked if his parents knew what had happened to him. His mother didn’t, but his father told him that the next time he left the house, he would be bringing a baseball bat with him.
He was nine years old. Nine. And this was the advice and guidance he was being offered by his role model and a person he looked up to.
I, in my former career as a primary school teacher, tried to alter the lens through which he saw life and people, but what did I know about his world?
How could I understand why a child might seek connection and community in the form of under-age crime groups? How could I understand a young person whose only source of validation and sense of worth came from the applause of others born into the same cycle of intergenerational trauma?
These are not excuses. They are questions — questions that should be asked if we are to try to understand the road Joey Carthy (15), Jack Kennedy (17), Alex McCarthy (17), Jeremy O’Brien (18), and Kamil Pustkowski (17) were on before they came to the motorway.
Driving down a motorway in the wrong direction, at speed, is a deplorable and utterly indefensible act.
But, while my thoughts are very much with the four innocent victims fighting for their lives in various hospitals, my experience working with children has forced me to be cognisant of the multitude of factors that can nudge young people to act in a way that can be described as reckless, senseless and selfish.
Tusla, the child and family agency, said in a statement that one of the deceased was in its care, while two other teenagers who died were known to the agency.
I have worked in schools where bad behaviour was a cry for connection and where some of the children were so starved of attention and interaction from adults that, even if it was to come in the form of being reprimanded, so be it — it was better than nothing.
I had a front-row seat to watching how under-age crime can become attractive to young boys. It usually began in the same way, their introduction to drug dealing marked with the sudden acquisition of flashy runners or a new jacket.
They sought out a sense of belonging, purpose and respect in a way that was beyond destructive, but that, ultimately, was their most accessible means of an identity and status within their community.
When their world lacked stability and they lacked control, the classroom, like the motorway, became the place where they felt most powerful.
Few will ever understand the psychology behind this behaviour as deeply as Dr Brian Pennie.
Dr Pennie grew up in a troubled housing estate in north Dublin. He first experimented with heroin aged 17, the start of a 15-year addiction to the Class-A drug.
After becoming sober, he went back to education to obtain a degree in psychology and a PhD in neuroscience. As he says, he “got lucky”.
“People tell me all the time that I’m great to have come back from addiction, but just think of the luck I had,” he said.
“I drove full of drugs for so many years and I could have easily killed somebody. I was just lucky that I didn’t.”
Dr Pennie grew up in an area “full of joyriders, drugs and violence”, and remembers being put under pressure to get into stolen cars on many occasions.
“I remember feeling peer pressured [to get into the car] because, if I didn’t, I would look weak, so I felt like I needed to get in,” he said.
“We don’t actually know what happened that night [of the M9 crash]. One or two of those kids could have just happened to be there that night, felt a bit lost, and ended up getting into the car.”
He said there is a correlation between the willingness of a young person to get involved in illegal activity and their sense of purpose, identity, reputation and respect from their equals.
Although we do not know each of the teenagers’ individual stories, Dr Pennie said he believes factors such as trauma, poverty, lack of purpose, a lack of belonging and identity “programmed and conditioned those kids to be in that car”.
The conversation often turns to youth programmes, early intervention initiatives and creating opportunities for young people within their communities.
“It’s really, really difficult then to try to get them to see the bigger picture and switch identities, and develop an identity where they would probably have to go back to education again and start from scratch,” Dr Pennie said.
“The further down the path they are, the harder it is to bring them back.
“What we need to address are the basic human needs. It comes back to poverty, housing, shelter, to feel loved and to feel protected, because if you don’t feel safe, you’ll find a way to feel safe, whether that be in an ego, in an identity of being the hard man, or being part of ‘the gang’.”
Caroline Strong, chief operations officer of the Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW), said that social workers around the country held their breath when they heard of the incident last Sunday.
“We knew that there was a high chance that some of these children were going to be engaged in state care because children who are living in balanced homes don’t engage in that kind of behaviour,” she said.
“We know from the research that children and young adults who are involved in criminalised behaviour are disproportionately from marginalised backgrounds.
“We totally understand the outrage, the anger and the outpouring of sadness for the innocent family who were on their way to Dublin Airport, but if we don’t look at where those five boys were six months ago, a year ago, or 18 months ago, then we’re not going to stop this from happening again.”
The onus, she said, cannot just lie with Tusla or An Garda Síochána, but requires a multi-agency response through which marginalised communities and families are resourced with the supports they need.
“There has been a huge amount of parental blame, but the stress that some of these families are under can’t be underestimated,” Ms Strong said.
“It’s very easy for those of us from middle-class backgrounds to judge, but I’ve never been hungry, I’ve never gone without a meal, and I’ve always been able to pay my bills.”
The IASW has spent years “calling out” for the National Review Panel to be granted statutory footing, whereby all agencies and services involved with youth offenders would be “compelled to present all information regarding their involvement with those children”.
“With that information, we should be able to identify the gaps and what was missed.”
