A row over the chronic shortage of detention centre spaces for young offenders has intensified after a judge demanded immediate action from Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald to deal with the crisis.

The High Court has ordered the release of a 15-year-old Dublin boy sentenced to 14 months detention at Oberstown Boys Centre, who was kept in a garda station because there was no place available for him at the Oberstown facility.

IT costs as much as €500,000 a year to keep just one young offender in a detention centre, it emerged yesterday.

A teenage burglar, who held a woman up in her house and threatened to stab her, has been given a 20-month sentence, by Judge Angela Ní Chonduin, at the Dublin Children’s Court.