A High Court judge said yesterday he would not approve the "hotel detention" of troubled and out-of-control children by health boards as no secure facilities were available.
Mr Justice Kelly said the situation for such children had descended to new levels of farce and he would not lend the court's imprimatur to their detention in hotels which, he said, were probably the least secure facilities.
"Is this the new health board policy, to accommodate children with difficulties in hotels?" he asked Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, for the Northern Area Health Board.
He noted that a 13-year-old boy in a hotel for some weeks had made serious threats of assault, broken up a house where he had been placed and threatened to burn the home of his former foster family. The boy had been accepted in Ballydowd special care unit but no place was available.
The judge also refused to make orders for two other boys. One is 14 and is also in a hotel.
The court heard the boy had been remanded to a State detention centre where no place was available and he was then held in a Garda station. A successful challenge was taken to the lawfulness of his detention in the station and he was put in a hotel pending the availability of a house.