Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The debate is a very useful one because it underlines the difficulties in this area. As Senator Alex White said, one does not want to include particular language in the Bill for the sake of it and to make it sound less than it really is. There needs to be precision and clarity about what is meant and what we are trying to achieve in this legislation. Special care is a unique form of care for any child and it is distinguished from all other forms of care in that it is in a secure setting. One cannot leave it and a child would not be placed in that type of care unless there was a pattern of doing harm to himself or herself or to others or of absconding. It is very distinctive and it can only be for a very short period. It is designed specifically to try to stabilise a difficult situation for a child. It is important, therefore, that the language is not casual or does not try to effect an atmosphere in the legislation. It needs to be precise and distinguished.

Placement is what happens with all children, whether in foster care, high support or other residential care. They are all placed as such. Therefore, the word "placement" may not be sufficient to achieve what we are talking about. We are talking about trying to distinguish this from the criminal justice system while retaining the distinction from the rest of the care world. That is the difficulty. The legal advice we have is that "detention" is the appropriate word, that it creates that distinction and that it is used in both the care and the criminal justice systems. However, I remain open to further discussion about this but we have underlined in the discussion we have had that it is not something that is easily done.