PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. IT has been a term bandied around in the last couple of months during debates on e-scooters, scramblers, and now, collisions on motorways.

Five teenagers died after the car they were travelling in, which was being driven the wrong direction on the M9 motorway, hit another vehicle last weekend.

The BMW collided with a Hyundai carrying three women and a 7-year-old boy. All those travelling in the Hyundai were taken to hospital and are in conditions ranging from serious to critical.

It is the second incident in recent weeks involving a car being driven the wrong way down an Irish motorway.

A serious two-vehicle collision occurred the week previous on the M50 southbound at Junction 12, Firhouse, Dublin 24.

Eight male teenagers were in that vehicle, all of whom were taken to hospital for treatment.

The mother of the man driving the other car – who was also injured – has said there “has to be consequences for what’s happened”.

She said she doesn’t “blame the children”, but added that there “has to be consequences”.

“If them children had been at home in their beds, my child would have come home to me. I wouldn’t have had to go to him,” she said.

The two incidents have stirred discussions online, with chat groups saying children and teenagers involved in such incidences should be “named and shamed”, even if they are under 18 years old.

“Then maybe the parents would take this shit seriously,” wrote one annoyed parent online.

‘Where are the parents?’

It’s the go-to argument when bad things are done by young people.

“Where are the parents?” many ask.

That question was posed to Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan this week when he spoke to the media on Monday.

“That’s a very good question, where are the parents?”

However, he went on to state that he didn’t want to focus on that now as it is a “difficult time for the five families who have deceased persons there at present, but that’s an issue that will have to be looked at in due course”.

“But I’m conscious as well that it can be challenging and difficult for parents because of the parents’ own circumstances or because of the behaviour of the individual son that may be just extremely difficult to control,” he said, adding that society as a whole also has a responsibility.

So is there a role for the government here?

The government in England and Wales is understood to be moving towards tougher action against parents if their children commit a crime.

Under plans to overhaul the youth justice system, Labour plans to strengthen and expand the use of parenting orders, which can compel parents or guardians to address their child’s behaviour, including attending counselling or guidance sessions, or face penalties such as fines.

An increase to the fine for breaching an order beyond the current maximum of £1,000 (€1,000) is also on the cards, with new powers to jail parents in the most extreme cases.

‘Parents who make no effort to control their children’

Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea spoke about the issue this week, stating that he had previously drafted legislation, which wasn’t accepted by the government, to penalise parents “who make no efforts to control their children”.

He said many parents do try to discipline and control their children’s bad behaviour, to no avail, but other parents do not.

In the latter circumstances, O’Dea said the parents should be held liable for their children’s crimes and should have to pay compensation to the victims of their children’s crimes.

He suggested making deductions out of the parents’ social welfare payments.

Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said he was in favour of fining parents whose children commit crimes, similar to the UK.

“I do think that parental responsibility has to come into play in all of these, from e-scooters to scramblers to this type of issue, and especially where there are multiple convictions in place, there has to be some situation where parents are held as responsible,” Tóibín said.

If the motivation for community responsibility is not there, the government has to introduce a financial motivation for some parents to stay in charge of their children, he added.

“All of these things are deterrents, first and foremost. We don’t want to take any money off people. We want people to adhere to the law. But, even the fact that a person knows that a tenner is going to come out of their social welfare every week for 50 weeks, that becomes a deterrent.”

So are the fines something that could be used in Ireland, and would it work?

Well, you might be surprised to hear that such mechanisms are already on the statute books here.

Options open to judges when sentencing

One senior minister pointed to them this week, telling The Journal they never understood why section 98 of the Children’s Act 2001 isn’t used more by the courts.

The law states that where a judge is satisfied of the guilt of a child charged with an offence it may, without prejudice to its general powers and in accordance with this Part, reprimand the child or apply one of the following:

• give a conditional discharge order
• give an order that the child pay a fine or costs
• give an order that the parent or guardian pay compensation
• apply a parental supervision order
• give an order imposing community service

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

But the option is there for the courts to hold parents responsible, such as with a parental supervision order whereby if a child is found guilty of an offence, the court may make an order for the supervision of the child’s parents where it is satisfied “that a wilful failure of the child’s parents to take care of or control the child contributed to the child’s criminal behaviour”.

While the idea of holding parents responsible seems like a good idea on paper, when you dig deeper into how realistic it is, problems rise to the surface.

As seen with most of the teenagers involved in the M9 collision, Tusla are often involved.

These are not privileged, middle-class families we are talking about. There are complex family dynamics at play within disadvantaged areas of the country.

Escaping dysfunction and poverty is often an impossible task for adults within our current societal and economic structures, never mind teens who have been born into such circumstances.

Youth diversion programmes

It is perhaps why the government’s focus in this area has been on tackling youth offending primarily through youth diversion and early intervention.

When asked about the issue of parental responsibility, the Department of Justice said in a statement to The Journal that the budget allocation for youth justice measures has almost doubled from 2020 to 2026, standing at a record €43 million.

The Youth Justice Strategy 2021-2027 emphasises early intervention, prevention, family support and community engagement, targeting behavioural change so the cycle of offending by young people is broken, it said.

As of this year, youth diversion services are now available nationwide.

There are currently 92 Youth Diversion Projects and four Targeted Youth Diversion Projects across the country that are funded by this department.

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The Probation Service also operates a number of initiatives designed to address serious and prolific youth offending for those who may be deemed unsuitable for diversion.

O’Callaghan recently said that despite year-on-year population growth amongst 12–17-year-olds, the number of children coming to the attention of the diversion programme has generally decreased, and in recent years has remained steady at about 8,000 each year.

“This shows that offending by children, when compared to population growth, is declining.”

That’s an optimistic reading of the figures. Another analysis could question if it shows more teenagers evading the attention of the criminal justice system entirely.

Whether that is the case or not, recent events have put the focus on parental responsibility.

But, it’s easy to jump to those simple soundbites.

It’s much more difficult to ask the hard questions about failings of the state.

As the North Inner City Community Coalition said this week, some of the public commentary described the young people who died as though their lives had no value and their deaths did not matter.

It said such language has made it more difficult to have the serious conversations that are now required.

“Young people are responsible for their actions, but they are also still developing. Adolescence is a period in which peer approval, belonging, identity and risk-taking can exercise a powerful influence. Social media can intensify those pressures by turning dangerous behaviour into content, status and recognition.

“This does not remove personal responsibility. It tells us something important about how prevention must work,” said the coalition.

The tragic events of recent weeks have no doubt sparked a conversation amongst the public about youth crime, how we handle it and how we prevent it.

With these conversations and debates getting louder, it often makes the government pay attention.

As one minister pointed to, perhaps the government will focus on promoting the laws we already have on the books when it comes to holding parents responsible.

But then again, the government must remain at arms length from the judiciary and can’t really be seen to be telling judges what punishments they should be doling out.

No doubt, after the events of recent weeks, this year’s budget will see a boost given to youth justice and the diversion programmes.

The question the government must ask itself now though is – is it enough?

Surely, if we’re to speak honestly about youth crime and how to prevent it, the focus must also turn to solving the issue of social deprivation and child poverty.

It’s notable that this week a government report found that child poverty fell by less than 1% last year.

Consistent poverty is defined as experiencing both low income and enforced deprivation simultaneously.

The report states that 208,000 children in Ireland were at risk of poverty in 2025. Beginning there might be a start.