Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. The practice of detaining children in the adult prison system, namely, St. Patrick's Institution, was contrary to a number of Ireland's international human rights obligations. It was counterproductive as a means of steering children away from future criminality and it represented a poor reflection of the State's policy towards children. Concerns and criticisms about the practice were levied against Ireland domestically, regionally and internationally for more than 30 years in the report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Penal System, the Whitaker report, of 1985, to which the Minister referred, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child concluding observations in 2006, the European committee for the prevention of torture as recently as February 2012, and the UN committee against torture concluding observations of July 2011.

Particular credit should be given to the Irish Penal Reform Trust and the Children's Rights Alliance which had consistently campaigned for the closure of St. Patrick's Institution and had kept the associated children's rights violations to the fore. The introduction of the Bill is an historic day for children's rights, juvenile justice and the progressive reform of our penal policy. It realises the programme for Government commitment in 2011 to end the practice of sending children to this institution. I support and welcome entirely the closure of the institution. I commend the Government and, in particular, the Minister, who was the former Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, and her successor, Deputy Reilly, for their hard work, commitment and initiative in completing this task.

I do not wish to be a killjoy or to detract from what is clearly a great success. However, given the time I have left in the House, I must take this opportunity to raise a number of concerns about child detention currently. I am concerned that with the closure of this institution, there will be a perception that the detention of children in adult institutions has ended which, of course, is not the case. While since 30 March 2015, all newly-remanded 17 year old males are committed to Oberstown, those sentenced to detention are committed to Wheatfield Prison, which is unsuitable for their needs. As of today, 13 boys of 17 years of age are serving sentences in this prison - I checked the figure earlier.

I also have concerns about Oberstown, some of which were reflected in a letter to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, following a visit there by members of the Joint Committee on Health and Children, including me, in June 2015. There is a need for the institution to publish its data. An accountable, transparent method of recording and making available data on violent and intimidatory incidents between residents is needed. It is essential that the safety of young people in Oberstown be prioritised. I have heard examples of six boys in a unit turning on one boy with only two staff on hand to contain the six boys if things got out of hand. It is not unfeasible that a young person could come to serious harm and I would like the Government to put mechanisms in place now rather than reacting later to a tragic incident involving death or serious injury to a child in detention.

Published information is needed on Oberstown's daily occupancy and capacity figures which separate out children on remand and children under sentence. All prisons, including Wheatfield, which expressly specifies the number of 17 year olds it holds, do this. It is vital that interested parties can monitor the use of remand on an ongoing basis.

The Minister will be aware from a number of my previous interventions that I have ongoing concerns around the overuse of remand for children. There is no rationale for keeping these figures out of the public domain, especially when the Irish Youth Justice System has not published an annual report since 2011. We need to track the nature and type of charges for which children are remanded and committed. According to Oberstown staff, the profile of charges has become more serious over the years and this has an impact for risk assessment both of staff and the children involved.

I would like to highlight the need for specific and ongoing training to deal with the increased age cohort. I have raised this issue with the Minister of Children and Youth Affairs on a number of occasions. These young people are physically bigger, display more challenging behaviour and have more serious charges against them, which changes the dynamic between the staff and younger boys who do not want to be seen to comply or buy in when the older boys are around. This concern was raised in the visiting committee report for St. Patrick’s Institution in 2014.While Oberstown is within the remit of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, we have an opportunity to consider a new system of sanctions and what we do with poor behaviour or escalating violence. Perhaps we need to look again at the issue and draw from best practice. We have a real opportunity to do things afresh with Oberstown.

The European committee for the prevention of torture visited Oberstown in 2014 and published a report in November 2015. Important concerns that the committee raised throughout the report include excessive use of force and handcuffs, use of lock-up due to insufficient staffing levels, insufficient access to natural light and austerity of the rooms, staff numbers and ratios and the need to photograph, record and report. I note a particularly worrying comment in the Government's response to the report that the operational capacity of 90, comprising 84 boys and six girls, "will be reviewed"; there are currently 54 places, comprising 48 boys and six girls. We are aware that staffing shortages have been raised by Members and the ability to replace staff out due to illness and injury must be examined before we look to expand. We need to consider children being placed on remand in Oberstown inappropriately. Perhaps we should not be looking at any increase but rather at dealing with this issue effectively.

The Minister raised the HIQA report of June 2015. It was a follow-up inspection report that identified widespread and unacceptable use of single separation and this must be addressed. The Irish Penal Reform Trust did a report on monitoring and accountability in Oberstown at the end of 2014 that identified a number of concerns with monitoring mechanisms, including around adequate resourcing of monitoring bodies, the lack of enforcement of the recommendations of monitoring bodies and the outdated nature of the standards used for inspection of the children detention schools.

The last point I raise relates to the assessment, consultation and therapy service, ACTS, which are supposed to assess all children remanded or committed to detention but this is not happening. According to staff, this is due to limited availability and logistics. Some children are regarded as too violent or difficult for ACTS, which begs the question of what are the criteria for ACTS? What message are we sending to a young person by saying he or she is too violent or difficult to reach. It is unacceptable that this service can disengage from working with a young person and surely this is what they are about.

I fully support this Bill but I had to take this opportunity to raise some of my concerns. What is being done today is historic and significant but I ask the Minister to consider the issues I raise relating to children in detention. We need to ensure that we can look at the other options available, particularly for children on remand and the children in Oberstown, so we do not use outdated practices in their detention.