Mr. Pat Bergin:

Things have settled over the past number of weeks. We have gone through a very difficult scenario in the past five or six weeks, particularly following on from the fire. Regarding the young people, it needs to be put in context. What happened on the 29th involved eight young people. There were another 31 young people on campus and they are well cared for, there was no issue with them, they did not get involved and did not want to be involved. Their routines, their place in terms of planning and their education continues as normal and has continued as normal. The challenge has been around a handful, a very particular number of young people, in terms of how they have been demonstrating and managing their behaviour. There was a follow-on difficulty for staff because of the impact of those young people's behaviour on the campus and towards the staff. It is important to put this in context. We still have young people who are mobile - who go home for weekends and young people who are out and about going to school every day. From a safety and security perspective, the five units, which are the new units down at the bottom of the campus, operate day by day and do their business that needs to be done. People need to recognise that the young people we have on the campus are young people who have not managed in other scenarios. They have been out in their communities, have been involved in the Garda diversion programmes and have committed offences, or are before the courts regarding offences. These are young people who will demonstrate and display challenging behaviour. That is the nature of the detention facility. This is not a facility where particular children are put together because of specific needs. We have not agreed that these children come to us; they are sent us by the court because of complex behaviours. That is important to understand in that we then need to manage within that environment.

On my capacity to place children in different units so as to be able to separate them, I have young people on remand and young people on committal back being mixed together and that creates a significant problem. In three weeks' time I hope to be able to separate those on remand from committals on the basis of the units that become available. That is how I assure that young people on remand are dealt with in a particular way and young people on committal are dealt with in another way. That other way is that they have an open type of unit where they are more free and they engage in their process, whereas with the young people on remand, we are focused on how we manage them on a day-by-day basis.

There is a significant number of resources including support for staff. We have a system in place on campus in regard to stress. With respect to young people, we have the ACTS team from Tusla on site, a medical health service on site, a general practitioner on site three days a week and a dentist on site. We have an immense amount of resources and structures that help us provide for the day-to-day care of young people. Our challenge - regardless of whether people want to accept this - is there is a real complexity around the change process that has been undertaken in Oberstown because of the historical way that business has been done.

For a long time the outside world did not come onto the campus. We have taken down the fences and have said that the outside world needs to come in, that it needs to help us. In doing that we are exposing what is going on in the campus. However, I would prefer people to know what is going on in the campus and that we do it right rather than having a fence around the place and keeping the world out. It is my approach and my management style, that if we need help we will bring people in to help us to provide the appropriate level of care for young people. That is the determination and the focus I have with regard to the care of young people.