Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I add my words to the request for the Leader to accede to a greater amount of time on the abortion Bill. It would be helpful.

I join in the welcome for the report on the youth guarantee produced this morning by our great colleague, Senator Kathryn Reilly. She is absent at the moment but we are very proud of her and it needs to be kept up. If we are not concerned about our youth, we are not concerned about our country and its future.

I strongly support the words of the Ombudsman for Children, Emily Logan, who welcomed the closure of St. Patrick's Institution for Young Offenders, as I do, and said that staff working with young offenders need to be very carefully selected. How we care for and treat young people who have offended, as young as 17 and 18 years of age, will affect their rehabilitation. I have worked with some of these young people and while they have done wrong in many cases, they have also been let down by society. Many of the causes are complex. Sometimes it is because they have had ADHD that has not been treated or they may have been let down by family, the education system, social workers and society. This is a key group of young people to assist so that they do not reoffend and so that they see futures outside of crime. That is good for us all because we all want to see crime figures coming down. We do not want to be growing crime by not treating young people right in detention centres. If we are really serious about attacking the problems that affect our society, we need a debate on the issue of how to rehabilitate young people in prison and how we treat them so that we are serious about tackling the causes of crime.