The High Court has refused to halt the prosecution of a young man accused of assaulting a social care worker at Oberstown Children Detention Campus while he was under 18.
The applicant, identified only as K., was aged 16 and almost nine months when the alleged incident occurred on September 7, 2022. He is charged with assault causing harm and producing an article capable of inflicting serious injury during a dispute or fight.
The prosecution alleges that K., who was already serving detention orders at Oberstown, refused to return to a unit, threatened staff, broke a branch from a tree and used it along with his fists to assault a social care worker. The worker was said to have suffered a fractured nose. These remain allegations and K. is presumed innocent.
K. argued that the investigation and prosecution had moved too slowly. He said that, had the case been completed before he turned 18 in January 2024, any further detention order might have been backdated or allowed to run concurrently with detention he was already serving.
Mr Justice Garrett Simons rejected that case. He found that the investigation had been progressed with reasonable expedition. K. was arrested and interviewed in January 2023, considered for the Garda Youth Diversion Programme, charged in October 2023 and given a Children Act section 75 hearing the following month.
At that hearing the District Court decided the alleged offences were too serious to be tried summarily and sent the case forward to the Circuit Court.
The High Court also found that the claimed sentencing disadvantage was too speculative. Given the alleged assault on a staff member while in custody, the prospect of any new detention order having been made entirely concurrent was described as remote.
The court further held that the District Court had approached its jurisdiction correctly. It had first to decide whether the offences were minor enough for summary trial before considering other issues.
The judicial review proceedings were dismissed in full. The criminal case remains to be determined by the Circuit Court.