Antisocial Behaviour Dail Éireann — 2026-04-16 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I thank Deputy Ward for raising this very important issue. Obviously there is a complexity to how society should respond to criminality by people under 18 years of age but my starting point is looking at the impact it has upon victims. From the victim's point of view, as Deputy Ward has described, it is cold comfort that the person who is perpetrating the criminal act or the antisocial behaviour is, in fact, under 18 years of age. The impact of the offence or the antisocial behaviour on the individual is as significant as it would be if it was being carried out by an adult as opposed to by a child. That is why I start, as I am sure Deputy Ward does, by looking at the impact on the victim. When it is the case that criminality is being carried out or antisocial behaviour engaged in by a person under 18 years of age, as Deputy Ward will be aware from experience, we have a different statutory procedure in terms of dealing with people who are defined as children under the Children Act. Since the enactment of the Children Act a quarter of a century ago, Ireland's approach has been to divert children from the criminal justice system, with detention being, as it says in the Act, an option of "last resort". That does not mean, however, that detention is not sometimes necessary. Regrettably, sometimes the detention of children is necessary. I am pleased to say that when it comes to Oberstown, we have been able, through consultation with the Minister for children, Deputy Foley, to increase the number of spaces available for boys in Oberstown. That was done as a result of consultation I had with the Minister, Deputy Foley. An essential pillar of the child-focused approach is the Garda youth diversion programme, and that is effective. It provides a statutory basis for the Garda youth diversion programme. The intention of this programme is to divert children aged 12 to 17 years who have been engaged in such behaviour away from the criminal justice system and towards more positive, pro-social behaviour and life choices. Children who commit criminal offences are considered for admission to the diversion programme. Each such case is assessed and the director of the Garda diversion programme, the Garda superintendent, decides if the case is suitable for inclusion in the programme. I recently had the pleasure of being out in Dún Laoghaire Garda station with Deputy Ward's colleague Deputy Devlin. I met officials and the superintendent there and was extremely impressed by their commitment to policing the area. Obviously, the challenges they face when it comes to dealing with juvenile offenders is consistent with the problems that exist around the country. Young people deemed suitable by the director of the Garda youth diversion programme may be referred to the local youth diversion projects where, in collaboration with a Garda juvenile liaison officer, these projects provide supports to children to address their behaviour and engage positively with their communities. People sometimes that youth diversion programmes are not effective or successful, but there is success in respect of them. If we look at the statistics in terms of the number of people being referred to youth diversion programmes, we can see that notwithstanding the year-on-year population growth, the number of children coming to the attention of the diversion programme has generally decreased. I appreciate that this might not be of much comfort to the victim suffering from the criminality or antisocial behaviour of a person under 18 years of age but there does need to be a Garda response. If the individual child does not want to go along with the youth diversion programme, then the force of the criminal justice system must operate in the way that it should in respect of children. If we want to put in a different statutory regime that does mean amending the Children Act and having a broader conversation about whether we wish to change the way we deal with children or whether want to redefine the age beneath 16. These are very complicated issues that we need to carefully consider. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-16