Lynn Ruane (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Ms Yiasouma is very welcome. I am definitely responsive to the type of language she is using and how she is speaking. It makes me excited to see what she does in the role.

Subjects like this are always close to my heart. At one stage, it looked inevitable that I was on my way to Oberstown, only for probation intervened at the time. It was nearly part of my life but it was very much part of many of the lives of my friends, who ended up in Oberstown at very young ages. It was not for serious crime, rather it was for robbing cars and stuff like that. Many of them went on to end up in addiction, in and out of adult prisons and stuff like that. There are huge conversations to have on what the point of detention at that young age is. I sit uncomfortably with the idea that it exists in the first place.

Some of my questions are operational. If Ms Yiasouma is not in a position to answer them now, perhaps they can be points to hold onto that we can feed back in six months’ time.