Kathleen O'Meara (Labour)

I second the motion and offer it my full support. It is an important issue and I welcome the Minister of State here to discuss it. We are seeing a lot of him because many of the issues currently before the House concern children. This motion addresses the area of juvenile crime and the prevention of offences.

The Government's amendment to the motion refers to the balance between the rehabilitation of young offenders and the protection of communities. We know that the numbers of centres in which young offenders are held has increased but I ask the Minister of State to describe the rehabilitation programmes the Government is sponsoring and what exactly is in place for the rehabilitation of young offenders. Unless those types of programmes are put in place we are failing young people. When a young offender comes before the courts it is an indication of a serious failure of the system somewhere along the way. A child should not come before the courts for offending but when that happens there is something very wrong. We have let those children down and have failed them at some level. Children who come before the courts represent the most vulnerable section of the community because something has happened in their young lives which has led to this situation. It is likely they are not attending school and are very vulnerable. I am basing these assumptions on general common sense assumptions. If a child is appearing before the courts there must be some difficulty in the family because the vast majority of children are raised successfully and become full participating members of the community. However, there is a section for whom that is not happening. We need to examine whether that number is increasing and, if so, the pressures causing this. We must ascertain whether there are sufficient measures in place to ensure the number does not increase. For the families of those in that position we have to examine whether these children are getting the support they need.

Two weeks ago I noted a number of reports on the issue of children in care and the extent to which there has been a considerable increase in recent years. The breakdown of these statistics compiled by health authorities and published recently in one of the national newspapers paints a disturbing picture of neglect and, in some cases, abuse of children. It shows that 4,984 children were admitted into State care in 2003.