Denizens of the High Court are inured to it by now: the million-pound injunctions and company wind-ups on Mr Justice Peter Kelly's list, suddenly suspended for yet another tragic child, another story of lost childhood and political neglect.

On March 10th, Mr Justice Kelly did something he had never done before. He directed that a 17-year-old girl should be detained in the Central Mental Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane. This was despite an expert view that it was totally inappropriate and possibly illegal. Although considered to be a "very serious" risk to herself and others, the girl is not a criminal nor is she mentally ill.

But he had no option, explained the judge, because of the State's failure to provide appropriate facilities or even a legislative framework to deal with such cases.

The child - who fantasises that her recently dead father will come and rescue her - has since written a few times to Mr Justice Kelly, including poetry on one occasion. Last Tuesday, he read out one of the letters in court: "You probably think I've gone mad," she wrote, "but I have not . . . All I want is people who are really going to be there for me, no matter what."

Yesterday, the nervous-looking, pretty teenager was back in the High Court, five years to the day, ironically, since the "FN" case, when Mr Justice Geoghegan declared that the State had a constitutional obligation to provide "as soon as reasonably practicable . . . suitable arrangements of containment with treatment" for troubled children.

"The State authorities could have been in no doubt of their obligations in that regard," said Mr Justice Kelly a month ago, in a swingeing judgment on official promises made to the court: "It was clear that on no occasion has there been adherence to the timescales indicated to me. In each case the provision of the facilities has been deferred further and further."

In the meantime, the trail of childhood misery through Mr Justice Kelly's court gains momentum, at a cost of an estimated £50,000 to £70,000 per case to the taxpayer.

Just a few weeks ago, the case unfolded of a 15-year-old girl who went out of control following the death of her mother. After coming under the influence of "truly evil" people, she was said to have had some 75 sexual partners while working as a prostitute, used her mobile phone as a sex chat line, smoked 40 to 60 cigarettes a day and took alcohol and drugs. In spite of this, she wound up in a State remand centre because there was nowhere better available.

Last week, an extremely disturbed 14-year-old girl with a propensity to epilepsy was ordered to be detained in the acute psychiatric unit of a general hospital. She had almost died after an overdose of alcohol and 20 ecstasy tablets, was allegedly raped after staying out late from a health board residential home, and had been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease.

What she needed - immediately, said an expert - was a secure residential environment where she could receive appropriate therapy and treatment from suitably qualified staff. But the child's life was in imminent danger, there was no suitable alternative and once again, Mr Justice Kelly spoke of the "appalling dilemma" in which he was being placed: the State's failure, he said, "manifests itself week in, week out".

Just four days before Christmas, another 14-year-old, described by a psychiatrist as "the saddest child I have ever met", with an alcoholic mother and a violent father who allegedly sexually abused her, and who had tried to kill herself on Christmas Day 1998, was sent to a State detention centre by the High Court. Thus an innocent child who, in the words of Mr Justice Kelly, "never had a chance", spent her 14th Christmas in a reformatory.

Shortly before that, a 16-year-old boy with psychiatric and psychological difficulties but with no criminal convictions was ordered to be returned to St Patrick's Institution - a prison - despite the presiding judge's view that his continued detention there was unlawful and the boy's allegation that he had been raped there.

This would have been no surprise to anyone. In 1997, a 13-year-old was warned by Judge Mary Martin that if she sent him there, he would be "locked up 23 hours a day and raped every night".

But the Supreme Court had previously ruled that children could be sent there for four to six weeks if there was no alternative. A case is pending at the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that this is in breach of the Convention on Human Rights.

Meanwhile, although the 16-year-old had been in St Patrick's for three months, Ms Justice McGuinness's only alternative was to put him on to the streets, something she was not prepared to do.

His counsel, Mr Gerard Durcan SC, who has acted for many of these troubled children, told the court that all the State and the health board could say was that there might be a place in a State remand centre in two weeks' time. The judge remarked that the boy was now almost 17 years old and medical opinion was that there was only a small opportunity left to help him and prevent him being involved in criminal offences for the rest of his life.

What she said must apply equally to others in similar straits. Court observers who have seen such children leave a court without a residential place often spot the same names four or five years later, only this time on bail applications. The child who wrote poetry for Mr Justice Kelly and wants only that people should be there for her will soon be 18 and out of his jurisdiction; an adult in the eyes of the State, though one who still poses an enormous risk to herself and others.

WHAT has befallen the two 12-year-old girls (who looked even young er), both on drugs and working as prostitutes? Or the 12-year-old boy, already notorious for violent assaults, drug-taking, absconding and aberrant sexual behaviour?

What is also remarkable is that without Mr Justice Kelly's terrier-like pursuit of the authorities, the building work that is finally being advanced might not be happening at all. While the State sat on its hands, district justices who for decades had despaired in the face of disturbed children and parents seemingly without rights, at last looked to the Constitution for a solution. No one had thought of it before.

In the early 1990s, judges in the Children's Court began to encourage solicitors to take their cases to the High Court, to vindicate their young clients' constitutional rights. This culminated in Mr Justice Geoghegan's landmark decision in 1995. The State did not appeal. Indeed, within a week, Department of Health officials were dazzling the High Court judge with a raft of proposals regarding residential places.

Two years later, however, confronted with a growing "children's list" and the fact that any movement in this area seemed to depend on the High Court and not the politicians or the law, Mr Justice Kelly called the Minister for Health to account. The impression left on some observers to those hearings was that to some Department officials, early intervention was the only solution, and that there was little point to developing units when this was a lost generation which would end up in the criminal justice system anyway.

Meanwhile, a heavy burden remains on the judges, says an observer: "If a judge makes the wrong choice and doesn't detain a child who then goes out and kills himself or somebody else, guess where the accusing fingers will point then."

"It is no exaggeration to characterise what has gone on as a scandal," Mr Justice Kelly concluded in a 1999 judgment. "I have had evidence of inter-Departmental wrangles over demarcation lines going on for months, seemingly endless delays in drafting and redrafting legislation, policy that appears to be made only to be reversed and a waste of public resources on, for example, going through an entire planning process for the Portrane development only for the Minister to change his mind, thereby necessitating the whole process being gone through again."

The judge then took the unusual step of compelling the Minister to complete two developments, in Lucan and Portrane, within the Department's own specified timescale. Significantly, that injunction is being complied with to the letter, in marked contrast to others around the State which the judge has also set his sights on. Impressed by the detailed action plan and timescale presented by Health Department officials last April, he consented to an eight-month adjournment to give it time.

But despite the senior managers' group that was set up and some encouraging advances, in no case have the timescales been adhered to.

Furthermore, it had already been decided "at the highest level in the Department of Health and Children, that as a matter of policy" no undertaking about future compliance would be given to the court.

Faced, then, with the possibility of yet another injunction compelling him to carry out his own plan, the then minister, Brian Cowen - in stark contrast to the rocket-like response in 1995 - took refuge in several technical objections, one of which actually questioned the right of the children named to seek the injunction.

In the face of this and much else, Mr Justice Kelly made the order, "to ensure that the Minister, who has already decided on the policy, lives up to his word and carries it into effect".

Even as things stand, the judge concluded, "it will be fully seven years since the decision in FN before these facilities are in operation. These children and others like them are at an important stage in their development. Much can be done for them. Their future lives as adults can be influenced for good but only if the appropriate facilities are available. They have a right to them. They ought to have been provided long before now. It is a scandal that they have not. A great deal of time has been lost. This court can allow no more".

The saga is lurching to a close but may not be resolved. The possibility is being looked at of taking a case to try to extend a constitutional principle: that if the State does not give the constitutional rights due to a child when he's a child, then it may have to do so when he is an adult.

The implications are breathtaking.