JUSTICE MINISTER JIM O’Callaghan has said his department has identified about 1,000 children who are beyond the reach of youth diversion programmes. 

In a wide-ranging interview with The Journal’s politics podcast The Candidate, the minister discussed the “fear” and “anger” the M9 collision has generated among the public. 

In response, a new youth justice strategy is to be developed, confirmed O’Callaghan, who said that it must address how to reach young people that are not engaging. 

While he said there are a lot of children who are successfully being diverted from the pathway of criminality, a small cohort of young people “are inaccessible to youth diversion programmes”. 

He added: 

We can’t get them as of yet, and the five teenagers in the car, being frank, were probably an example of that.

Since the incident on the M9 motorway, the minister said he has looked for reports into youth crime and also specifically on the five teenagers involved in the collision.

It is understood that in the report on the five teenagers, a general theme on youth justice emerges which states the closure of schools during the pandemic had a major impact on young people, with many dropping out of the education system and away from social and educational supports.

“There are a number of characteristics that are apparent in the inaccessible cohort,” said the minister. 

“One of the characteristics is a lot of these young boys fall out of education, and if a young man boy falls out of education, that’s a real warning sign,” he said.  

Detention of children 

“A lot of the response after this crash would have been: Why aren’t they locked up? We need to lock up kids.

“We have a legal system which at present under the Children Act says that detention of children should be a last resort and, you know, in most cases that’s correct, because if you start detaining a kid at 15, 16, 17, they’re going to get into a spiral of detention. 

But it certainly is the case that for some kids detention is probably necessary and we’re not doing them a favour by just allowing them to run havoc.

These young people are not fearful of the criminal justice system, he added.

“These are young boys, predominantly boys between the ages of 15, 16, 17, who don’t seem to care. They don’t respond to, I suppose, what’s there at present. So, as minister for justice, I have to look at it from a number of factors because there’s no one solution to trying to get at that cohort,” he said.

The new youth justice strategy may need to include a different type of youth diversion programme that these children will engage with, said O’Callaghan:

“We need to be able to focus on measures that target them [1,000 teens]. And one of the measures in respect of it is, greater funding, greater access to them, more stringent application of rules in respect of education, and also the prospect that there’s a threat to them if they don’t go along that pathway. The threat has to be at some stage detention.”

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As part of the new strategy, the area of detention, which the minister said should remain as a last resort, will be reviewed.

The mechanisms under the Children’s Act, which offers a variety of options when it comes to penalties that can be imposed by a court, will also be assessed, said O’Callaghan.

These include giving an order that the child who committed a crime pay a fine or costs or that their parents should pay compensation. The option is also there for a parental order to be applied or community service imposed. 

There is also the option to send the child to a detention centre, such as Oberstown.

The minister said his department’s new youth crime strategy will review the extent to which those statutory provisions are being availed of by the courts.  

“Maybe they need to be availed of more,” said the minister.

“But like it’s always going to be a difficult task for a judge when there’s a child before the court, the parents have difficulties in terms of asserting control over the child, and the legislation says detention should only be a last option.

“And I think it is correct that detention should only be a last option for a child, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be circumstances and cases where detention is necessary,” he said. 

Listen to Jim O’Callaghan’s full interview on The Candidate here.