Ms Deirdre Malone:

The first point to make is our position always is that prison always should be a last resort. Moreover, penal expansion has not proved itself to be particularly effective where that policy has been pursued. It is quite clear that it always assists, when one is in a position in which prisons are needed, to have an allocated prison for remand prisoners who have not yet been convicted. As for children, however, it has been shown time and time again, through research of the Irish Penal Reform Trust and others, that for children the focus must be on a therapeutic environment. The plans for Oberstown potentially will go a long way towards achieving that. When the plans for Oberstown were revealed, it was hoped this would be a real opportunity to provide a state-of-the-art facility for children where the focus was on therapy, education and rehabilitation. The key point is that children are very different from adults and require substantially more support. Hopefully, Oberstown will achieve this but at present, children still are being detained in Wheatfield, which is an adult prison. While it is correct to state that this is in a dedicated unit within Wheatfield, none the less the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan, has made a clear point that it simply is not appropriate for children to be detained in an adult institution, albeit within a specialised unit. We want all children to be detained in an appropriate therapeutic facility.