There was a 47% increase in assaults at Oberstown Children's Detention Campus last year.

New figures also show four boys have been held at the State’s child detention centre for at least four years.

According to Freedom of Information figures released to Newstalk, there were 29 boys and no girls at the Dublin campus at the end of last year.

Some 14 children had been there for less than six months, while 15 had been there for six months or more.

Four boys had been detained there for over four years.

Oberstown Children's Detention Centre in Dublin | Image: Iain White/Fennell Photography

According to the figures, there were 15 drug seizures in the centre last year, down from 32 the year before.

However, assaults rose sharply over the same period - from 32 in 2019 to 47 in 2020.

Last year, there were 21 assaults on staff by children, and 26 child-on-child attacks.

Assaults

Patricia Casey, Consultant Psychiatrist at the Hermitage Medical Clinic in Dublin, said the number of assaults is not surprising.

“Wherever there are disturbed people there are going to be problems of that sort,” she said.

“When people have anger problems and when people are impulsive, impulsivity and anger problems are a dangerous mix and people are very easily triggered into acting on those impulses and acting out emotions they find difficult to control in these settings.”

Backgrounds

She said many of the children at the campus come from difficult backgrounds.

“Many of them would be coming through the care system,” she said.

“They would have been taken into care perhaps as young children because their parents may have been drug addicts, their parents may have neglected them, they may have ben victims of violence, they may have been victims of sexual abuse so they would be coming invariably from very troubled backgrounds.”

"Better reporting"

In a statement, Oberstown said the rise in assault figures is linked to "more and better reporting in general on campus."

“In the past number of years, Oberstown has developed a better and more accurate system for the reporting of all activity across the campus,” it said.

“The rigorous reporting of incidents by staff, supported by the introduction of a new case management system, has improved reporting greatly.”

The centre said its objective is to “provide young people sent to us by the courts with care, education and development" to allow them to "return and contribute positively to their families and communities.”

“At all times the health, safety and wellbeing of everyone on the Oberstown campus – young people and staff – is the number one priority,” it said.