asked the Minister for Justice the total capital cost to date of Loughan House, County Cavan, including any modifications which were necessary and the current cost per annum of maintaining a boy in that institution.
Written Answers - Loughan House Costs.
184.
The total capital cost to date of Loughan House is £1,236,000. Even if Loughan House had never been used to provide temporary accommodation for delinquent boys under 16 years of age, most of this expenditure would have been necessary to develop it as an open place of detention for juvenile offenders under 16 years of age, or for young adult offenders and such a programme of development was in fact evisaged as far back as 1975.
Loughan House accommodates about 25 boys at present. Taking all current expenditure into account (that is, the cost of the high level of staffing, victualling and so on but not capital costs) the expenditure per boy works out at about £30,000 per annum.
Part of the building is being used to accommodate staff pending the completion of new separate staff quarters. When the staff move out the building will be able to accommodate some further boys. An increase in the number of boys would not necessarily involve a proportionate increase in staffing, so that the annual cost per boy should reduce as their number increases. I understand, however, that, because the majority of the boys committed to Loughan House are of a type which no other special school is prepared to attempt to detain, an increase in their number can only be effected with extreme caution. A significant factor in this regard is the fact that Loughan House was not purpose-built for the detention of such boys and, unlike some generally comparable schools in other countries, it has not got a secure facility where boys who are for the time being particularly disruptive can be confined. The school which the Department of Education are about to build at Lusk will, of course, be purpose-built for the kind of boy in question.