Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 November 2017
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs
HIQA Inspection of the Oberstown Children's Detention Campus: Discussion
9:30 am
Professor Ursula Kilkelly:
I will start on that matter. Obviously, as the Deputy has said, the case arose out of events subsequent to the fire and the other incident on campus in 2017. In the judgment handed down by Ms Justice Ní Raifeartaigh on Monday we saw a very careful consideration of all the circumstances which arose in the case taken by four young people. It is very important for the record that there is that kind of accountability and that these people were able to access and take those proceedings. That is very significant. This is clearly one measure of accountability. It will take us some time to go through the judgment and assess its implications as it is nearly 100 pages long. Certainly, our preliminary reading of the judgment, which has been limited as we have been dealing with other matters in recent days, suggests that the learning contained within it coheres with the HIQA report. The concerns are primarily that the usage of separation is, to a limited degree as the Deputy pointed out, a breach of rights in the very specific context of the judgment. The issue of recording is also important in the judgment and is repeatedly mentioned in the HIQA report. We have already addressed this to some extent in changing the practice around recording, we now record as much of the substantive issue as possible.