Ten youth detention staff sick for a yea

Ten staff members at a children’s detention centre have been on sick leave for more than a year, it has emerged.

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said beds at the Oberstown Centre in Lusk, Co Dublin, were lying empty because of staffing issues.

“We are now pursuing a twin-track approach of recruiting staff on an interim basis and seeing if we can use some agency staff to increase the bed space,” she said.

A Government decision to stop sending 16-year-olds to adult prisons, together with a spike in judges remanding teenagers, had put demand on Oberstown at a record high, the minister told a meeting of the Oireachtas committee of health and children.

There are 24 beds in Trinity House School, including eight waiting to open, 20 in Oberstown Boy’s School and eight in Oberstown Girl’s School which are rarely full.

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin said the Children’s Ombudsman, Emily Logan, had raised concerns that staff at the Oberstown campus were not properly trained and called for the matter to be urgently addressed. He believed the number of staff on sick leave indicated that something was not right at the centre.

“Is it the case that there are increasing assaults on staff resulting in stress and sick leave? That’s what I’m being told,” he said.

Ms Fitzgerald said that over the last few months there had been a dramatic increase in referrals.

She said there were 190 staff members at Oberstown where there were three separate units now being placed under a single management structure.

Ms Fitzgerald said it took two years to put agreements in place so that staff could move between the three units. A roster had been working since February.

“We are at a situation where we are still trying to make those extra beds available and, at this point, it would appear that the only way forward is to hire more staff on an interim basis.”

She said more permanent staff would be provided next year when all of the 16 and 17-year-olds were moved from prison to the detention centre.

Jim Breslin, the secretary general of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, said further efficiencies could be explored in the roster that was introduced in February and there was an opportunity to use the additional working hours resulting from the Haddington Road Agreement.

He said sick leave was a problem on the campus, but was not specifically related to the arrival of the 16 year olds. “I think that would be wrong and it would be pointing the finger in the wrong direction.”

The committee was told that the development of a €50m 30-bed unit would commence this summer and open next year, when an additional 67 staff would be hired.