I want to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary on carrying a Bill of this magnitude through the House in the spirit in which this Bill has been carried through. Anybody who knows the amount of work that must have gone into a codifying statute of this kind realises that it meant a great deal of hard work. The Parliamentary Secretary's political opponents, as well as his friends, admit that all informed opinion has combined to congratulate him on what is, on the whole, a well-drafted and well-conceived measure for the protection of mentally afflicted persons. One matter in relation to the Bill is of particular concern to me and, indeed, to the Minister for Justice, who is now sitting beside the Parliamentary Secretary. The Parliamentary Secretary has provided in one of the sections of this Bill specific authority for a local authority to establish clinics at which children suffering from nervous trouble or from potential mental instability can be examined and, if necessary, treated. In fact, I think we may say that the Bill provides for the establishment of child-guidance clinics. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to invoke the Ministerial powers delegated to him to require, at least, the public authority of the City of Dublin to provide such a clinic forthwith. I have no doubt that, when the Minister for Justice rises to introduce his Estimate, he will tell us of the increase in juvenile delinquency. If he does, he will have a story to tell no different from that which public authorities have to tell in almost every other country of the world. There may be many contributing causes to that increase in juvenile delinquency which we can discuss when the Minister's Estimate comes before the House. However, it is certain that one factor contributing to juvenile delinquency, in normal and abnormal times, is the psychological strain on the children.
I remember some years ago being privileged to sit on the bench with the magistrate in the Children's Court when it used to be held down in the Four Courts. When I lived in Dublin, I frequently attended that court for the purpose of observing the proceedings. I also visited Summerhill Detention Home when that detestable institution was in existence. It is now closed up and the children have been transferred to other premises. That experience led me to believe that many of the children coming before the court for various kinds of offences were not really guilty of misconduct at all but were merely manifesting symptoms of the psychological diseases from which they were suffering. I do not want the House to think that I am making the case that every child brought before a district justice by the Guards is sick and does not deserve punishment. A great many of the children brought before the juvenile courts in this city are tough little guys who want the badness whacked out of them, but a good many who come before the courts again and again do so because there is some psychological flaw in themselves which, if left unattended, will, in adolescence of maturity, develop into some mental defect which may cripple them throughout their whole lives. Very often it will emerge, when skilled observers examine that child, that the psychological disability from which it is suffering and which is the cause of its misdemeanour, is due not so much to any inherent fault in the child as to some fault in its parents, either inherited by the child or brought into play by some defect in the upbringing of the child. A competent officer of such a child-guidance clinic as I have in mind could, in half an hour's conversation with the mother or father of that child, point out the mistakes they were making in the handling of what might be a highly strung or difficult child and, by correcting those errors, secure, in the perfectly normal routine of the home, the therapeutic measures necessary to restore that child to normalcy and withdraw it from the path of delinquency. Do Deputies realise that, at present, if a child breaks a window, he is not dragged before the Children's Court? The Guards are, as a general rule, extremely prudent, even paternal. They may not even approach the child at all but mention the matter to his parents. Even if the child breaks another window, it is quite unlikely that he will come before the Children's Court.
The Guards will go to the parents, remonstrate with them and caution them to look after their children. He breaks a third window and he will not even then be brought before the court. There is even then never any question of sending that child to an industrial school, reformatory or any institution of that kind. In 99 cases out of 100 the district justice will call the parents before him, urge them to give more attention to that child, and see that it does not repeat conduct of that kind. It is only when the offence is repeated a fourth or fifth time that the question of removal to an industrial school arises.
There is where the courts go wrong because a normal child does not go and break windows on four or five separate occasions one after another. We have all broken windows in our day, sometimes by mistake, sometimes just to hear the glass cracking, but when we have paid the penalty for breaking one or two windows most of us as normal members of the community, decide that the game is not worth the candle and turn our attention to something else. When you have a child breaking windows on five or six occasions one after the other, the sensible conclusion to come to is that there is some psychological flaw there that requires investigation. At the present time there is no machinery to have such an investigation carried out and the district justice is confronted with the position that he must send that child to an industrial school where there may be anything from 60 to 600 inmates. The child is put through the mill of that institution, which is run to cater for the average child, although the authorities should be well aware that there is nothing average about that child, that it is quite abnormal, and that if due regard is not paid to that abnormality and adequate steps taken to correct it now, in 15 years' time it is not windows he will be breaking, but he will be attacking women indecently along the back roads of the country.
I want to provide a child guidance clinic where the psychological irregularities of delinquent juveniles can be put right while there is time to put them right, so that families will not be afflicted by having psychopathic lunatics in the family, and so that the public will not be afflicted by having to deal with abnormal adults who are perpetrating fantastic crimes, not because they are criminals, but because they are "draft." Do not think that I am asking for something exotic or fantastic. What I am asking for is that our children should have the same conditions as every child in America, at least children in the neighbourhood of an urban centre, and as most children in Great Britain have at the present time.
