Author Neil Gaiman wrote recently about a lecture he attended organised by private prison operators in New York. In planning for future capacity needs, the industry employed a simple test – the percentage of 10- and 11-year-old children in any district with acute literacy problems.

The link between educational underachievement, social empowerment and drug crime is real and complex. Using simplistic or evocative language does not inform the discussion. It turns a public policy emergency into comic-book-style pseudo-entertainment. We must ask why Ireland has a parallel economy of a drug trade which attracts and empowers so many.

That the drug industry flourishes in Ireland is unsurprising: 30 per cent of disadvantaged children have basic reading problems; almost one-fifth of our adult population are functionally illiterate; 25 per cent of young mothers in poorer areas suffer from maternal depression; and 21 per cent of children go to school or to bed hungry.

Separated society
In this country, we work extremely hard to keep ourselves separated from each other. This is the antithesis of what a republic should stand for. Why are we so determined to separate ourselves from those who make us uncomfortable or who we judge to be inferior to ourselves? We want schools, hospitals and housing policies that separate.

If you are on the right side of that separation, life may work out just fine. If you are not, life is more difficult. You may be presented with choices others never encounter; your inability to access the other side of the line may fester within you; your crimes are more public because you are poorer; and you will be called a “scumbag” to simplify the issue.

Everyone seeks significance. From a loved one. From colleagues. From family. From friends. It is our most basic need. If you feel in your core you’re not valued by mainstream society, are you expected to work hard to gain respect? Or do you become the best of the worst you can be? And when corruption in business, banking, politics and religion goes unpunished, why are you expected to behave yourself? To get on the other side of the line? To lie and cheat but merely with a suit, a polished accent and within the realm of respectability?

One of the greatest policy failures in Ireland is in pre-school education. A three year old from a welfare-dependent family has one-third the oral-language capability of one from a professional family.

If we know this, how are we supporting that child and its parents? Are we waiting for it to become part of the research data for those who plan prison spaces? Why don’t we commit ourselves to the total eradication of illiteracy?

I launched my “Right to Read Campaign” in 2006 to bridge this gulf. By making the scourge of illiteracy the responsibility of every State agency, most especially local authorities who house our more disadvantaged children, who manage their social infrastructure and who deliver the public library service.

British columnist Caitlin Moran calls public libraries the “Cathedrals of Our Souls”. When I began teaching in Sheriff Street, the local library in Summerhill closed on Saturdays. The Right to Read Campaign acquired the funding to open it, and this campaign will shortly be part of a Department of Environment directive.

There are policy approaches that can make a difference. The realisation of the programme for government commitment to establish 10 area-based anti-child poverty strategies across the country is crucial. Does the political sphere have the courage to pursue this? Especially when it is more advantageous to blame the voiceless.

Drug treatment
Our attempts at treating drug dependency regularly fall at the wayside of political expediency. The National Drugs Strategy demands that addicts are treated within their own community, and recognises their challenge as a medical condition. Yet how often have local representatives lobbied against drug treatment facilities in their community?

Our task in the short term is to reduce recidivist drug crime. Let us challenge our humanity, and not surrender to our indifference.

Aodhán Ó Riordáin is Labour TD for Dublin North Central