Sir, – In a very interesting article on the detention of young people in Oberstown (The Prison Problem, January 24th) Dan Griffin points out that it costs €300,000 per annum to host and educate a child there. He also indicated the Department of Children and Youth Affairs has tendered for new facilities on the site.
Such substantial waste of taxpayers’ money will continue if the department continues to ignore preventative educational work in the community. As manager of full-time education provision for 16 at-risk out-of-school young teenagers that receives no State funding, I can only say that it is no surprise that young people end up in Oberstown, given the neglect they experience at local level.
The teenagers we deal with have no “school”, so they have no access to National Council for Special Education resources, nor access to psychological services. The only solution the State can offer is to tell them to go to back to a school system which has been unable to accommodate their needs.
There are value-for-money solutions which can keep disadvantaged young people out of crime and out of Oberstown and St Patrick’s. Unfortunately the inability of the Department of Education and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to overcome demarcation issues means many more children will continue to unnecessarily fall between the cracks that these departments have created. – Yours, etc,