The principle in new legislation that children should be committed to detention only as a last resort was warmly welcomed at a seminar at the weekend.
The Government's Children's Bill is "full of opportunities", according to a senior childcare worker. Ms Gertie Raftery, the deputy director of Trinity House School, was speaking at a seminar on Saturday given by the Children's Legal Centre, a voluntary body which monitors legislation affecting children.
The seminar was attended by representatives of agencies dealing with children, the Garda Siochana and the voluntary sector.
Ms Raftery welcomed the Bill's underlying principle that detention of children should be a last resort, saying this would have "a huge significance in how children would be treated by the law in future".
She also described the establishment of family conferences, whereby child offenders would meet the victims of their crimes as being "hugely important in shifting our focus on work with offenders".
The juvenile justice system is currently based on a 1908 Act. Under this Act, the minimum period for which a child may be detained when convicted of a crime is two years. Ms Raftery said an adult would have to be on their sixth or seventh appearance on larceny charges before they would get a two-year sentence. Under the new Bill the penalty for a child offender may be no more than that for an adult in similar circumstances and "may be less". The new Bill also sets out measures relating to court orders for the detention of children. Ms Raftery said some in the sector had been concerned about a provision of the Bill whereby if a judge orders a child to be detained, the director of a detention centre must accept them.
They feared that in place of the confusion which exists now when a child is taken to a detention centre where there was no room for them, the new provision would simply mean that another child would have to be put onto the street.
Ms Raftery said safeguards are in place in the legislation which would avoid this situation and "would make a huge improvement for us". The Bill provides that a court must ensure there is a space free before making a detention order and also that detention orders may be deferred until such time as a space becomes free.
A controversial aspect of the Bill is that it allows the courts to order parents to make compensation payments for crimes committed by their children. Ms Raftery attacked the idea, saying "making parents responsible for the crimes of their children to the extent of fining them seems like a further abuse of people who have been neglected and marginalised by the system already. We have parents begging for interventions and now they are going to be fined because they can't get the interventions?"
Ms Mary Ellen Ring, a leading barrister in the field, highlighted another area of concern, that of the choice of a responsible adult to look after the interests of children during questioning by gardai. The Bill contains no guidelines for who should be called but does allow gardai to call on health board personnel.
Ms Ring said she felt this might lead to an over-reliance on health boards. Responding to a question from the floor, she said it might be advisable to establish a rota of responsible persons who could be called on to act for children. This would also help to avoid situations where children in Garda stations were inappropriately held with adults.