Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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The Deputy refers to two reports - an investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman for Children and the Operational Review of Oberstown Children Detention Campus commissioned by the Board of Management of Oberstown in September 2016.

The Ombudsman for Children is currently undertaking an investigation in relation to Oberstown under the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002. This Act provides that where the Ombudsman for Children conducts an investigation under the Act, he shall send a statement of the result of the investigation to the public body concerned and to the relevant the Department of State. The investigation has not concluded and I can confirm that my Department has not received this statement as yet.

The final report of the Operational Review of Oberstown Children Detention Campus that was commissioned by the Board of Management of Oberstown was received in February 2017. The full recommendations from this report were published in July 2017.

I am monitoring the progress of the implementation of the recommendations from this report and a number of other reviews which were commissioned at the same time. In this regard, I established a Review Implementation Group which began work in March 2017. The Group prepared a report in December 2017, which contained the collated recommendations from all of the reviews. The updated Action Plan from the Review Implementation Group was completed in May 2018 and was published on my Department’s website.  A key priority for the Department is the implementation of key recommendations to bring about improvements in standards, which is now well underway. 

The Operational Review was carried out following a particularly difficult time in Oberstown. However, I am advised by Oberstown management that the environment in Oberstown is now more stable. There is evidence of positive change in the day to day operations. I met with some young people when I visited Oberstown on a number of occasions in recent months. These young people were anxious that it be known that there are many positives about Oberstown. Given the passage of time it is considered that it would be misleading to publish the report now, having regard to progress that has been achieved in the interim.

Additionally, it is imperative that those commissioning the report must be satisfied that fair procedures were applied before publication. I have received a number of legal advices in relation to publication of the report of the Operational Review of Oberstown Children Detention Campus, the most recent of which was received in April 2018. I wished to be assured that fair procedures had been followed in relation to all persons referred to in the report, before it can be published. I sought assurance from the Board that it was satisfied that fair procedures were applied. The Board has not been in a position to provide such assurances to date and on this basis it is not proposed to publish the report. 

As part of its recent inspection of Oberstown, HIQA was invited to review the report. It is expected that HIQA will consider any issues and concerns in its inspection report as appropriate.