State pays €4,500 a week for teen’s flat

A district court judge has stated that it is “scandalous” that the State is paying a private operator €4,500 a week to house a troubled teen with no services.

At the family law court in Ennis, Judge Patrick Durcan said that the €250,000 annual spend on accommodating the 16 year old at an apartment in a town in Co Louth is a multiple of what would cost sending a teen to Eton College in England.

Judge Durcan said: “There is an expenditure of €250,000 a year by the State for a boy in a centre where there is nothing being provided for him... There seems be no planning involved in this case. There is no planning, purely reaction, no action — reaction the whole time.”