Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for those questions. It is not clear. It is linked to court activity and sometimes coming up to the end of a court term one gets many referrals. Sometimes it is arbitrary depending on what cases are referred to the courts and the previous history. There is much movement of young people back and forth with court appearances. Some of them may have had six court appearances before there is a decision, or they may have broken bail. A wide variety of circumstances might apply. The Judiciary is very well aware that detention is a last resort. We will have discussions with the Judiciary on this issue because we want to do the very best for children. We need to identify whether there are community resources that could be developed for some of these young people.

Whether we speak of high support units, special care or detention, we are discussing people with very high levels of need. In many cases their families ask for them to be taken into care because they cannot manage them - for example, to high support units such as was reported in the Monaghan case. These are young people who are out of control. If we were in another country we would probably have a greater range of specialist services for these young people. I have reviewed the histories of some of the groups who have been in Oberstown recently and they are very similar to the children spoken about in the child death report, who have contact with many agencies, are high risk and can be extremely difficult to help and need a very specialist, co-ordinated approach. If one really wants to help these young people one needs to deal with proper risk assessment and interventions. Very often we need very specialist interventions and a range of services to help these people.

It is not easy for the residential staff working with them either. This is challenging work in the residential centres. When the young people were in St. Patrick's Institution as 16 and 17 year olds, there were fewer referrals for detention. Given that we have new facilities, it may be - I cannot comment on judicial decisions - that there is a belief that referring young people to Oberstown clearly is preferable to referring them to St. Patrick's Institution. That may be an influencing factor also.

Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin asked why the adoption (amendment) Bill was not on the A list. I cannot put it on it for a technical reason. The certificate cannot be signed while a challenge is ongoing and until the challenge is heard, we cannot progress the legislation. However, it has been drafted and was prepared before the referendum. When we are in a position to have the certificate signed, I can immediately put the Bill on the A list.

The Deputy asked about the Oberstown centre, the management and staff. Ms Janet Hughes, a former rights commissioner, is working with the staff and conducting an assessment of the rosters, which should help. I have appointed a board that is experienced in this area and its members have been heavily involved in trying to progress matters at Oberstown. They have given significant time to this task and made many unannounced visits to the facility. I have met the staff and management to discuss how we progress the issues involved. It is difficult for people to move from a scenario where they worked in three units on the campus to treating the campus as one unit, which is what we need to happen. It demands change by the staff and institutional change and support for these changes. The staff from the youth justice section in my Department have spent months working on these changes to ensure they will be carried through because if we invest €50 million in a new centre at Oberstown, we want to make sure we have the staff who can respond flexibly to the needs of young people in a new setting. There is a great deal of work being done from an industrial relations perspective. The unions and the Department are involved and huge efforts are being made to support the staff in these changes. I thank both the staff and my officials who have been working on this issue. However, change is difficult for people. Changing rosters is difficult. This is residential work with troubled young people, which is a challenging scenario. Everything is being done to support the staff and make sure the changes work.

With regard to the case in Monaghan raised by Senator Jillian van Turnhout, I have full confidence in the work Gordon Jeyes is doing and the actions he has taken. He has been directly involved. It is not up to me to talk about the detail of the actions he has taken regarding that centre, but he has directly monitored the situation there and took a decision to close it. He is an experienced chief executive officer in the new agency and took that decision in the children's interests. I do not believe it is a case of using a mallet rather than introducing reforms. He is also reforming the high support and special care units generally.