McDowell defends decision on child prosecutions
The Tánaiste said public opinion would not tolerate a situation where a child was not prosecuted for murder or rape.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, reviewing Ireland’s progress in implementing the Child Rights Convention in Geneva this week, was critical of the legislation.
Mr McDowell said: “They are entitled to their view. But, God forbid, three 11-year-olds took an eight-year-old and threw him under a train. Do they go back to school on Monday with a promise of a case conference to consider their situation some time in the distant future?”
He believed there might be parents who want something done with the 11-year-old who murdered their son or raped their daughter.
“I do not think we should be naive on these matters. It’s easy to talk about it in the abstract, but wait until one of those cases happens.”
If there were no punitive consequences for children who murdered or raped other than a mild rebuke and sent back to school, he believed public opinion would not wear it.
“You do not just walk away from such situations and say ‘these things happen and we must get in a psychologist to work out why it happened’,” he said.
Mr McDowell was attending a meeting of EU justice ministers in Tampere, Finland.
He said he did not know if the new child justice law would mean other EU countries would have to extradite any 10-year-olds suspected of committing a murder or rape in Ireland back for trial.
The new legislation, due to come into force shortly, raises the age of legal responsibility from seven to 12 for most offences but to 10 and 11 for murder and serious sexual offences.
