THE Eastern Health Board will be asked to close a home for troublesome boys in Wicklow next week.
Two young teenage boys spent several hours on the roof of Newtown House, near Newtownmountkennedy, last Thursday evening.
The request to close the house will be made by the chairman of the board's community care committee, Senator Dick Roche, at a full meeting of the board.
He says the institution cannot handle the seven boys housed in it. He wants it turned into a respite care centre instead.
A board spokeswoman said the two boys got on to the roof through a padlocked attic. They were demanding to be moved back to Dublin. They threw slates off the roof. "These are difficult children," she added.
Senator Roche says local people are very nervous, though they had welcomed the boys when they first came there. This was the second rooftop protest in some months.
"The building cannot be made secure for these youngsters," he says. The health board is building a secure unit in the Dublin area and they should be transferred there.