Twice as many bench warrants are issued for child offenders who fail to turn up in court as for adult offenders, The Irish Times has learned.
In 2001, 684 such warrants were issued by the Children's Court in Dublin, which dealt with 12,629 criminal matters, including 2,570 under the Road Traffic Acts.
Many of the individuals were charged with multiple offences.
Over a similar period, almost 5,000 bench warrants were issued in the Metropolitan district courts, out of almost 200,000 criminal matters dealt with.
This means that for every 40 adult offences a bench warrant is issued, whereas it is issued for every 20 offences involving children.
If the court is told by gardaí that the accused is unlikely to turn up for trial he or she is normally refused bail, but it has been difficult to remand young offenders in custody because of the shortage of remand places in juvenile detention centres. So bail is usually granted, and the offender then does not turn up for trial.
Meanwhile, the head of the Prison Service, Mr Sean Aylward, told The Irish Times that the service is ready to convert a floor in St Patrick's Institution to a detention centre for juvenile offenders, as announced by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, on Wednesday last.
"The power exists under the 1908 Act to designate a building or a part of a building as a reformatory," he said. "We will have to ensure separate custody and separate facilities, but this will be fairly easy, because the women prisoners had totally separate facilities there for years.
"We also have 13 purpose-built classrooms and 10 teachers, and we'll make extra provision for education. There will also be a need for specialist staff.
"We have a new director of regimes in the service, Maresa Coughlan, and she will chair the team dealing with it, which includes the governor of St Patrick's, Sean Lennon. The staff there are used to dealing with young people; we already had a good few civil committals. They will get six months training.
"No-one thinks the situation is ideal, but we'll make a reasonable fist of it."
Mr Aylward said that he was preparing to take up to 20 such young offenders into St Patrick's. "I hope the courts will use it prudentially and as a last resort," he said.
Paradoxically, if the 2001 Children's Act, which became law last July, was implemented, the Minister for Justice would not be able to designate part of St Patrick's Institution as a detention centre for young offenders. There is no provision in the 2001 Act for detaining children in a prison, which St Patrick's is, but it is allowed in the 1908 Act if the child is "so unruly and depraved" that he cannot be detained elsewhere.
The legality of the detention in St Patrick's of a troubled child who had not committed an offence is already before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and a decision is expected within weeks. In a case known as DG vs Ireland, the youth was detained in St Patrick's because there was nowhere else to put him. Although this is a civil, rather than a criminal case, it is likely to give a general ruling on the sending of juveniles to a prison for adults.