Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I may not speak for the entire committee but I fully support the idea of zero tolerance for the admission of children to adult facilities.

I might bounce around a little in my questions because this is very broad legislation and we have already talked in this meeting about parallel legislation. To return to the issue of consent, I am trying to understand something mentioned in our guests’ opening statement and the information they sent us in September. It relates to cases of children under the age of 16, where the consent of the guardian comes into play. The September submission referred to assessing maturity. Who does that and how does it work? It may be a simplistic question, but is there a lower age bracket, similar to the lower age that applies to responsibility in law? The principle of consent applies to children under the age of 16, but is there a point below which we do not assess maturity?