James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Regina Doherty talked about the centre at Oberstown, staffing and IR issues and ongoing negotiations. It is not unexpected that there are staff IR issues when three schools are being amalgamated. That was the reason we brought forward legislation. We want to make the best use of these facilities. We want it to be one school under a principal and to reduce administration costs. Obviously, this means change for those who are working there.

The Deputy mentioned the level of sick leave. I do not have the figure available to me. The work is highly pressured and the staff deal with difficult cases. Let us face it - this is the last port of call for the children concerned who are so disturbed and in so much trouble that the only place for them is a place of detention, everything else having been exhausted, even though we are looking to examine how we can create more community based services to address their needs. We covered this issue in the Children (Amendment) Bill 2015. One can say only 25% of children approximately on remand, although it might be 27%, end up in detention. That speaks to the fact that detention is seen as a last resort and that everything else is tried first, but that is not to say we cannot explore different models and newer community initiatives to try to keep children away from detention where no one wants to see them placed, if at all possible.