Dr. Sharon Lambert:

At 25 years of age. I say this with regard to all of these services such as mental health, homelessness and justice services. One should have children's services, young adult-specific services and then adult services. In a young adult-specific service, it is not appropriate to have a 25-year-old and 15-year-old in the same place, for example, but should have young adults from 17 to 25 years of age where we apply a developmentally appropriate lens. We understand that they are developmentally different from an older adult.

We did a study, for example, on young adults in homelessness a number of years ago. These were young people who were parents themselves but they were all under the age of 25. We spoke to those young people and to service providers and the service provider said that these young people were not able to navigate the homelessness systems and structures in the way that somebody who is older is. They were sometimes viewed as immature and demanding but that is developmentally appropriate for that age as one is still going through the developmental stage.

On restorative justice, I worked in a Garda diversion project myself before I became a psychologist and we did practice restorative justice and it was extremely effective. There is much great work going on with regard to murder in Maynooth looking at restorative justice practices and they are very effective. I do not think that one should do restorative justice practices when it has been a sexual offence because it depends and one has to be very careful about what one is doing in that regard.

On the high levels of recidivism, yes, they are. If one looks at the group which has the highest level of recidivism, it is the 18 to 25-year-old cohort. By having a developmental psychology lens on what we do, we would target that group and have different policies and practices for them.

The Deputy talked about housing. When I started working in community-based services, we never had a young person who was homeless. I moved into academia in 2015 and that year was the first time we had young people where we could not find somewhere for them to stay. These were young people who were experiencing a significant amount of emotional challenges. They were involved in drug use but were not involved in injecting and other high-risk practices. They ended up in homelessness services, in emergency accommodation and they deteriorated very quickly because of the trauma of being in an emergency accommodation. I do not know if the Deputy has ever visited an emergency shelter but one has a group of very unwell people all congregated in one place. It can be very scary.

Deputy Daly then asked me about the Parole Board recommendations. I will not say anything about that because I could not speak highly enough of the CEO and the chair on the work we did in the Parole Board. It may have plans itself to do a review of its work and I do not have permission to discuss that. I did not have it on my agenda, if the Deputy does not mind.