TWELVE children out of the 3,000 in the care of the health boards are receiving treatment outside the State, according to the Department of Health. They includes four from Border counties who are in residential homes in the North near their own homes.
One child required "highly specialised care", and is in "an international respected centre" in the US, according to a Department statement. The remainder are in the North and the UK.
They include a 16 year old sex offender who was sent by the Western Health Board to the Aycliffe Centre in Newcastle in Britain, a week ago. Treatment costs £120,000 a year.
The youth, who was charged with assaulting a women in Salthill, Co Galway, while on bail for another sex related crime had an assessment from St Michael's Children's Centre which was described by Judge John Garavan as "chilling". On the basis of the assessment the consultants treating him felt there was no suitable centre for him in the State, according to Mr Seamus Mannion WHB programme manager of community care.
This case needed to be seen in the context of all the health boards sending people abroad for specialised care where it was not available in the State, he added.
Mr Kieran McGrath, editor of The Irish Social Worker and an expert in the treatment of disturbed young people, said the Aycliffe Centre was a very secure therapeutic centre which combined high security with a lot of intensive therapy. No place like it existed in Ireland, he said.
However, he did not think such a centre was a necessary priority here. "If we had services for people at an earlier stage - help and support in their own families, good residential care and good foster case - they won't need these kind of places when they're 15 or 16."
The child in the US is in the care of the Southern Health Board. A SHB spokeswoman told The Irish Times he suffered from a psychiatric and behavioural problem which afflicted only one in a million people. He was responding to the treatment.
She said there were four such children abroad at the moment, adding that it would not be economic to attempt to provide the highly specialised treatment they needed here. A total of £300,000 was spent by the SHB on the four children.
The Eastern Health Board has no severely disturbed children abroad for treatment. This summer, it opened a centre, Newtown House in Co Wicklow, for children "with challenging behaviour" who require care and therapy.
However, containing and treating such children is very expensive. According to the EHB spokeswoman, the approximate cost of keeping a child there is £60,000 a year.
Mr McGrath said: "Health boards have a great difficulty in grasping this particular nettle and none of the Government Departments are prepared to grapple with these problems. It is tempting therefore to send them abroad and just spend money on it rather than set up the necessary structures here."
It does not necessarily cost a lot of money to treat young sex offenders. He is currently working with a group of six adolescent sex offenders and their families in a project which is costing the taxpayer only £25,000.