Ms Koulla Yiasouma:

I will put a caveat on everything I am about to say with the fact that I have not joined the board yet. I will join next week on 1 June. I will answer the questions as best I can. The Senator is right. The minimum age of criminal responsibility in Ireland is 12, unless the child has committed the most serious of offences. I see a head being shaken. I can have that conversation very happily when it is ten. A ten-year-old or 11-year-old who commits a most serious crime would end up in Oberstown. I think I am right to say that there is nobody of that age at the moment. The average age of young people in Oberstown in 16. Most of them are in that older age group. If memory serves me, I think the youngest is 14 but we can get that information.

The Senator spoke about violence. In my view, Oberstown should not be compared to a prison. It should be compared to a children's home where the doors are locked. It is what we call a secure children's home. When one looks at the figures and reads the HIQA reports, one can see that violence between children, and between children and staff has decreased. It is always inevitable. Wherever there are groups of kids together it is going to happen. To help answer the question on age, Oberstown is arranged with house units. It has separate units, so it does not have big dormitories. I think it has units of eight. They are separated in accordance with needs. If two young people know each other, and are adversarial or in conflict they will be put into separate units. That diminishes the violence. When it comes to funding, I make no apologies for the €27 million. When the State decides it needs to lock up a child it has a responsibility to care for that child in the best way it can. I have not interrogated the budget. In one year's time I will be able to stand over it. Having looked at the figures, €19 million of that €27 million is spent on staff. This is a staff-heavy service. It is 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The punishment for young people is losing their liberty, and then we need to care for them. I understand there is work ongoing around cost. It is difficult to measure that. Once that has been completed it will be made available. On the success rate, it is very difficult to ask a place like Oberstown to stop a young person offending forever. As I have stated, bearing in mind the nature and background of the young people we are talking about this requires a systemic approach. As Oberstown has developed its practice and model of care it needs to be able to demonstrate its outcomes. This is what I see happening in its next phase of its development. At the moment there are no statistics on recidivism or success. I can see that the work has been to make sure the quality of care is as good as it should be. The next phase is to provide the evidence that it helps young people progress in their lives. That is what I hope to do in the next four years.