Thomas O'Neill, the leader of the gang, first came before the courts aged 12, on charges of handling stolen property, writes Conor Lally.
The victim of the Cratloe Woods gang-rape entered the witness box at the Central Criminal Court yesterday to tell Mr Justice Carney how she had been affected by the horrific ordeal she was subjected to by four Limerick youths.
"Just to say our lives, and my family, were devastated after what happened," she said. "There are a lot of pieces to pick up, a lot of pain to be dealt with. We're trying to get on with life and not let what happened destroy the rest of our lives".
Three of the four convicted were on bail at the time the gang raped her.
The ringleader, 16-year-old Thomas O'Neill, was supposed to be locked up at the time. He should have been less than halfway through a three-year term of imprisonment imposed in late 2002 for a number of offences, including an aggravated burglary.
He was held at Trinity House, Lusk, for a number of months, but staff could not cope with him.
They applied to the courts for an "unruly and depraved" order. Under this he was transferred to Limerick Prison, which is for adults. He was 15 at the time.
He was released on New Year's Eve 2003.
He is a prolific criminal, having amassed 39 convictions. He was too out of control to be held in a juvenile detention centre, but his release from prison was unsupervised.
He resumed criminal activity immediately, culminating in him leading and directing the gang rape just over three weeks after his release.
O'Neill first came before the courts aged 12, on charges of handling stolen property. He was assigned to the probation services who got poor co-operation from his parents. He is one of five siblings, fathered by three different men. His stepfather is serving eight years for drug-dealing.
In April 2002, aged 13, O'Neill was assessed at St Michael's assessment centre in Finglas. The conclusion was that he was a dangerous child who lived an unstructured life and engaged in anti-social behaviour. He has had no secondary school education.
He was sentenced to two years at Oberstown House, Lusk, on May 1st, 2002, but there was no bed for him so he was sent home. His criminal behaviour continued, and he was sent back to Oberstown at the end of May. He absconded a number of times.
In September 2003 he was remanded to Trinity House, Lusk, for more serious offenders.
He absconded again and threatened staff with a screwdriver while being escorted. It was in October 2003 that he was classified as unruly and sent to Limerick Prison, from where he was released three months later.
Those working with juvenile criminals recognise this pattern and say there are many others falling through the cracks in the grossly under-resourced probation service.
While the probation services are run by the Department of Justice, once a child is sent to a detention centre he or she becomes the responsibility of the Department of Education.
The timing of a child's release from detention is at the discretion of the directors of detention centres. Their release is often forced by a shortage of beds.
There is no post-release service involving probation officers. The probation services are rarely informed of a release.
Mr Oliver Fallon, a spokesman for the probation and welfare branch of IMPACT, said after yesterday's sentencing that the case demonstrated "the worst-case scenarios that can occur when little is done to deal with children who present before the courts at a very early age".
He said family conferences, where families are involved in the rehabilitation of a child, are vital for boys like the four jailed yesterday. While the Children Act, 2001, provided for conferencing this has yet to be fully rolled out.
Thirty new probation service staff have been recruited and trained to prepare for the national implementation of family conferencing.
The relevant section of the Act officially came into operation yesterday.
More resources were also needed for post-release programmes and sentence-management programmes, Mr Fallon said, adding that it was impossible to say if these would have steered O'Neill on to the straight and narrow.
"The point is that the budget of the probation service is only a fraction of that of prison officer overtime," he added.