Ms Emily Logan:

I do not want to get into the minutiae of how they will be operationalised, as it is not my place, but there is a strong desire that everyone on the campus should be able to look after any child up to 18 years of age. This is not an aspiration - it is a reasonable expectation.

There is a publicly reported increase in the amount of sick leave. As someone who is an experienced public servant and manager of large organisations, an increase in sick leave is usually a symptom of something else. I would be cautious and encourage the committee not to respond immediately by demonising any client group. In this case, it is children who have committed crimes, but it could be any group of vulnerable adults. It does not matter whether one works in the public sector. If one is a social worker, one expects to be confronted with families that are vulnerable. As a nurse in an accident and emergency department, one expects to meet abusive clients. If one is a social care worker in an environment where children are in conflict with the law, it is a reasonable expectation that the children will be challenging.

It is a matter of being competent, trained and upskilled to deal with the situation.

Reference was made to assault leave but I caution against using the children as the reason. Perhaps we should explore a little bit further why this is a symptom of an organisation that clearly does not work as a single body, in that there are three siloed institutions on one campus.

We speak to children all of the time. Sadly, the children at Oberstown and St. Patrick's Institution sometimes have the same profile as the children contained in the child death review report compiled by Dr. Geoffrey Shannon and Ms Norah Gibbons. They have been known to the care system and State for many years. Most who are sent to both places on remand are in care of the State. There is a quite a strong connection between how we provide for children in our child protection system and what happens to them after they have been in conflict with the law. Children who have poor family attachments also have problems with mental health, drugs and substance abuse. These are risk behaviours and, when they converge, children are more likely to get involved or be in conflict with the law.

I wrote down Deputy McLellan's last question on the capital project. I have no fears about it, as the Minister has been demonstrative in her statements on the Government's commitment to ring-fencing it.

Deputy Healy was the next to ask questions and asked whether we were going in the right direction. I am confident about that, which is why I referred to the Children Act 2001. It is very good legislation that is thought of highly internationally. People believe it is a very good vision for a youth justice system. The system should not be about sending children to prisons and detaining them for lower level crimes, but dealing with them in the community under supervision while keeping detention as a last resort. I support the legislative and policy direction.

As to whether the timeframe is acceptable, it is probably unfair. It is easy for me, at a distance, to say what the timeframe should be. I want to see some progress, but I am probably at this meeting because I do not have the same sense of progress that we made in the early part of 2011, specifically regarding Oberstown. I am not referring to the accommodation. I mean in terms of-----