Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I second Senator Alex White's proposal on an amendment to the Order of Business. The announcement that there will be progress on the development of a child detention centre at Lusk is very welcome. We have heard much talk about juvenile crime and juvenile offenders, particularly in the context of the tragic deaths of two Polish men in Drimnagh recently, which horrified us all. There is an important issue here regarding how we treat child offenders. It is desirable that we do not detain child offenders in the same place as adult offenders. That is why the new detention centre at Lusk is very welcome as it will basically treat the detention of young offenders as a child care issue.

I want to know — this should be the subject of a debate in this House — why it is still proposed that there would be detention of young offenders of 16 and 17 years in the proposed Thornton Hall complex. When we detain young offenders with older offenders we provide stepping stones in the wrong direction. People who currently have experience of St. Patrick's Institution, which is on the Mountjoy Prison site, will affirm that younger offenders there are almost aspiring to be with the older offenders and the older cohort is aspiring to be in Mountjoy. I ask for quick and speedy progress on the Lusk detention centre in order to make unnecessary the detention of young persons in the proposed Thornton Hall complex. I call for an approach to child offending that believes in the potential of rehabilitating young offenders who are still at a formative stage in their lives.

I wish to briefly refer to an issue covered in some newspapers today, namely the sale of bogus mass cards. This is a matter which is not just of concern to people of faith. Irrespective of whether people have faith, we all like to show solidarity with the bereaved at times. People may not know that mass cards very often contribute to priests on the missions who have very low incomes and are doing great work. The sale of bogus mass cards in shops means that masses are not being said at all and the money is going into the hands of profiteers. This is not just a private matter which is of interest to the Church. It is an issue of solidarity and I hope when the Charities Bill comes before this House that there will be support across the House for a measure that would target something that is claiming to have a charitable purpose but which is a bogus arrangement. That loophole should be closed and I hope it will not just be people of faith, or of one particular faith, who will support any such amendment.