Dr. Niall Muldoon:

The regulations currently in place always point to putting them in the best possible setting. In practice, decisions are made based on what is available at a given moment in time and where the safest place for the child can be found. I do not know if we need to change the legislation but we need to provide more options for that cohort of people. It is not a large number of young people. There are probably between 300 or 400 young people in that situation. It is a question of creating opportunities so that nobody has to consider putting them into an adult unit or some other inappropriate setting. That is where we are falling down at present.