‘Children’s referendum will change nothing’

The children’s rights referendum will “bring no change” when the State has just 10 places for troubled teenagers in need of secure and special therapeutic care, a judge has claimed.

Judge Ann Ryan, at the Dublin Children’s Court, said the shortage of places for children needing special therapeutic care was “a shame, a sin, and a disgrace”.

Her comments came during a case involving a girl, 17, who is in the throes of a drug addiction and keeps absconding from care. The girl has been living in a residential care unit and had been ordered as a condition of bail to obey a curfew there.