High cost of detention centres highlighted

The cost of keeping a young offender in a Finglas-based detention centre rose to more than €500,000 in 2004 - largely because of a "turf war" between the departments of justice and education.

That is one of the key findings of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee, which yesterday also said a €4.7 million unit at a detention centre in Lusk is unoccupied just three years after it was built. The report noted the unit remained closed, despite the courts frequently being unable to source a place of detention for a young offender.

Describing the operation of the detention centres as "a fiasco and a disgrace", Public Accounts Committee chairman Michael Noonan said the cost of maintaining a child in the Finglas Child and Adolescent Centre at €507,407 was comparable to the €80,000 a year it cost to keep an adult in Mountjoy prison.

While there were additional educational facilities in detention centres Mr Noonan said the large difference in costs would lead the taxpayer to expect to get "more bang for their buck", but this was not the case. Experience showed some 50 per cent of inmates in juvenile detention centres were recidivist offenders he said.

The committee noted that when the Finglas centre in Co Dublin was first examined in 2002, "basic requirements were not being met. There was a lack of direction and it was an organisation in crisis with internal conflicts undermining the centre."

Referring to the under-utilisation of the fourth unit at Trinity House, Lusk, Mr Noonan said it was constructed in 2003 but was not being used in the summer of 2005 and has not been used since. However, the report noted that costs in other centres were not so high, with the average cost of maintaining a young person at St Joseph's School in Clonmel in 2004 was between €151,000 and €233,000, depending on average capacity. The report was also critical of the Department of Education in other areas. These were: the setting up of the National Educational Psychological Service; and a 19 per cent cost overrun in the provision of five schools under a public private partnership scheme.

Mr Noonan said errors had occurred in the setting up of the psychological service which had led to psychologists being recruited centrally and then dispatched to the regions to work. In fact, many had refused to move from Dublin and this had led to serious regional imbalances.