Ms Niamh McCormack:

I might return to Deputy Butterly's point. To be clear, I was quoting the special rapporteur on child protection at the time, and now judge, Dr. Geoffrey Shannon. It was his position that it was clearly symptomatic of a child protection issue. That might not be a child protection issue in the home, but in what they are accessing online and all the complications that go with that. I know that is a live conversation in the Houses at present.

On the point of those who are below the age of 14, much of the conversation today has been around the types of intervention available but it is important to note that currently, under the 2001 Act, there is a provision that refers to antisocial behaviour. It applies to those who are below the age of criminal responsibility. There is a lower threshold so that they are not criminalised in the same way. That is where youth diversion, including funding youth diversion properly for the type of policing done in those communities and the interventions that are made, comes in. However, it also needs to go hand-in-hand with youth work projects.

We keep speaking about the bail supervision scheme but the point I was going to make earlier, and why I think it is so important, is that when there are delays in the system, interventions like the bail supervision scheme can be transformative at that early stage. A bail application is when they are brought before the court for the first time after they have been charged. If you can make interventions at that point and there is a delay of 18 months before they go to trial, they may come back a completely different child with a completely different family environment. Those are the kinds of intense social intervention we are trying to describe in moving it away from a criminal response.