Sian Mulholland
North Antrim · Alliance Party · Northern Ireland
“Members from different parties recognised that our justice system must continue to evolve and continue to have children, young people and victims at its heart. What, we know, works to reduce offending and create safer communities has that support. <BR /> <BR />Not every contribution reflected that approach.”
“I will use my final Member's statement before recess to reflect on the work of the Ten is Too Young Coalition and all those who have worked so passionately to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR), including Voice of Young People in Care, the Children's Law Centre, NIACRO, the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Childre…”
“We so often hear calls in the Chamber for legislation that is evidence-led, data-driven and compliant with our human rights obligations. Those are principles that I wholeheartedly support, but they cannot be principles that are applied only when they are convenient. Children's rights are human rights too.”
“<BR /> <BR />The triggering of the petition of concern mechanism was a misuse of a mechanism that was designed to protect minority rights. Here it is, blocking change designed to protect those who are most vulnerable.”
“Safeguarding falls within your remit, Minister. We know that, but we also know that it is the responsibility of each and every one of us. That is part of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. Faith-based counselling is not subject to the same regulation as other clinical counselling services.”
“Thank you, Minister. I am glad to hear you say that the role played by social workers is "complex and challenging". From what I hear from those who have contacted me, social workers are stretched to capacity. What is the Department doing to address that?”
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“Or we are full of hot air. We have lots to say. <BR /> <BR />I turn to the amendments specifically, because each asks us in —.”
“I think that you came a close second, Chairman.”
“It was not the Chairman. It was former Member from North Antrim Daithí McKay at two hours and 10 minutes. I promise that I am not aiming to beat it.”
“<BR /> <BR />Mr Deputy Speaker, you will be glad to hear that I am nearing the end of my speech. I looked up who has made the longest speech in the Northern Ireland Assembly. There seems to be a trend amongst North Antrim MLAs.”
“Thank you, Maurice. There will be those stories of genuine harm. No one in the Chamber can say that we already have a perfect system. I do not believe that we do. However, we should strive for better, which is why I come back to my evidence. If we are to prevent further victims, we need to look at the best ways in our arsenal to interrupt offending behaviour. You raise legitimate concerns about social services. When we look at the framework and the foundations that we need to put in place, such concerns can absolutely be part of it. We need to look at how we protect and nurture, and, again, that comes back to family support and how we ensure that we are looking at multidisciplinary frameworks that build a safety net around families. That is what I come back to.”
“If Members want to invoke the issue of violence against women and girls, they should listen to the organisations that work with victims and survivors every day. Women's Aid and Victim Support support raising MACR alongside having robust welfare-based structures. That is not weakness on harm; it is about how we intervene earlier and prevent harm from escalating.”
“From the discussions that I have had so far with the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and others I believe that there is a willingness to build that system to better move forward. <BR /> <BR />The same is true when Members raise the issues of violence against women and girls, school safety, bullying or harmful sexual behaviour. No one denies that those are really serious concerns, but keeping MACR at 10 is not a strategy to end violence against women and girls. Women and girls are protected not by slogans but by early intervention, safeguarding, school safety planning, specialist support, relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in schools and being open to what healthy relationships look like. It is about taking serious action against harmful behaviour before it escalates — nipping it in the bud.”
“She highlighted a major gap for 10- to 13-year-olds displaying harmful sexual behaviour, interpersonal violence and child-to-parent violence. However, her proposal was not to do nothing, nor was it criminalisation or mandatory detention. She proposed mandatory referral; assessment; therapeutic intervention; expansion of harmful sexual behaviour frameworks, where appropriate; and an invest-to-save approach. <BR /> <BR />When I was doing my research, I saw that that was exactly the realism that the debate needed. The question is not whether serious harm should be addressed — of course it should — but whether the system can provide a credible, consistent and effective pathway for the small number of high-risk cases and whether we are willing to build that system properly.”
“She emphasised that serious cases, particularly those that involve harmful sexual behaviour, should be addressed through specialist therapeutic and safeguarding pathways. She has dedicated her entire career to this. Her evidence was that appropriate, specialised services already exist but are not accessed early enough, not consistently used and not well integrated into system pathways. That is one of the reasons why I chose that as the subject of my North Antrim Adjournment debate: the system is a postcode lottery at this time. She made the point that serious cases are often predictable and preventable but that early warning signs are frequently missed, and delays in referral increase the risk of escalation.”
“For the wider 10-to-13 cohort, behaviour is often early or emerging and is linked to trauma and unmet need. Risk may be escalating. Often, it can be addressed through early intervention and voluntary engagement, as I have already discussed. However, there is that smaller and more complex group: children who are involved in serious violence, harmful sexual behaviour, repeated high-risk behaviour or significant escalation. That cohort requires a serious specialist pathway, not slogans, panic or the emotionalising of their crime. That is where the independent social worker Marcella Leonard's evidence was so important, both when I met her and through reading her work. She has substantial expertise in domestic violence, sexual violence, safeguarding, serious case reviews and harmful sexual behaviours.”
“I recognise the seriousness of those offences, the public concern and the need for safeguards. Offences that are committed by children aged between 10 and 13 are rarely at the serious end of the spectrum. The PPS has confirmed that, when such cases arise, they are rare and exceptional. In the past six years, only one child of that age has been sentenced to custody in the Juvenile Justice Centre. We cannot build an entire law around the most exceptional cases while ignoring the much larger group of children whose behaviour is linked to trauma, family stress, poor attendance at school and all the things that we have already discussed. <BR /> <BR />The stakeholder engagement that I have had suggests that we need to distinguish between two groups.”
“Thank you. <BR /> <BR />I will move on to serious harm, as we have been discussing. That is where some of the hardest questions will arise. That is why my amendment includes exceptions for:”
“Not at all. I am saying that we need to intervene earlier to work out why they need that safe space. Why is prison safer than their home life and the places where they should be protected? For me, that is the bigger question, but I understand what the Minister — the Member has said.”
“Thank you, Kellie. Those stories go right the way through the system. I spoke to youth workers who work in prisons, and they said that they see young people committing crime specifically to be put back inside and be re-institutionalised because, in the words of one of them, it is the only safe place that they have ever known. It is the only place where they get fed, where they are warm and where they know that they are not normally in really serious —.”
“Regardless of whether they believe that criminalisation at a young age is right or wrong, they all said, "All that I want to know is that what happened to me will not happen to anybody else". If the best way to do that and to interrupt the offending cycle is through diversionary projects at an early age, that is where it is most important.”
“I will be honest with the Member: this is not a black-and-white or easy subject. The Chairperson of the Committee and I have had a discussion about how it is difficult. It is a really emotive issue, particularly when you or someone you love has been harmed. As the mummy of three children, I get that the most primal instinct is to protect those whom you love. However, I go back to the fact that there is no one way to deliver justice that will feel right for every victim or their loved one. We sometimes focus on the offence level, but I would rather focus on the child and how we prevent further victims, because the best thing that we can do to protect victims and assuage their worries is to tell them that this will not happen to someone else. That was the big thing that came through from all the victims' groups that I met.”
“The Minister has said it much better than I could.”
“They said that it is rare to find a homogeneous group of victims who all want the same follow-up. <BR /> <BR />Restorative justice practice will place a perpetrator or a young person who has engaged in offending behaviour in a facilitated, safe space with the person they have harmed, and that is a much more effective intervention to change the cycle of offending behaviour than going through the criminal justice system in a courtroom. The earlier we can have therapeutic interventions with young perpetrators, which are trauma-led and use restorative justice practice, the more we will change the cycles of behaviour before the child is 13 or 14, when the behaviour has become embedded and is part of who they are and what they think of themselves.”
“I covered at the beginning the conversations that we have had about victims. I reiterate that it does not take away any agency from victims. I have met Victim Support NI, the Victims' Commissioner, victim groups and individual victims, but I have also met young people who are both victims and perpetrators. I have tried to engage as much as I can as a solo MLA on the amendment because I do not have a private Member's Bill. However, the one thing that came through clearly is that no two victims are the same. When you meet one victim, you have met one victim. First, the individual victims can feel very differently about the harm or the offence, even though two people can experience the same situation. Secondly, justice looks really different to each victim. That was stark in my meeting with Victim Support NI.”
“<BR /> <BR />We have looked really seriously and closely at what Scotland has done, because Scotland has already taken that step in part. Scotland is not a perfect comparator for Northern Ireland, with our proposal to move from the age of 10 to 14, but it is highly relevant to public confidence and the "What happens next?" arguments. The lesson from Scotland was not simply to raise the age; it was that reform needs those pathways. It needs a safeguarding system, victim support, public communication and clear data. Northern Ireland must build that pathway and not simply change the age. From answers given by the Minister of Justice, I believe that that is exactly what is intended.”
“It has to include an end-to-end pathway for various types of behaviour, rapid safeguarding assessment, clear police referral routes, specific protocols for children in care and regional equality. There therefore has to be the kind of support that I mentioned that there is in the Western Trust and the South Eastern Trust so that it does not just depend on a postcode. It has to include data and monitoring, because one of the strongest messages from the CJI report was that we cannot approve what we do not see. <BR /> <BR />If we raise MACR, the Assembly must be able to judge outcomes, reoffending, attendance and victim experience. That is why a five-year review is imperative. It is not a sign of uncertainty about the principle; it is a sign that we are really serious about implementation.”
“There are successful models from which we can learn, and I mentioned a number of such models in the Western Trust and the South Eastern Trust, through the work that the Youth Justice Agency is doing there. <BR /> <BR />I will address some of the misconceptions about the view that nothing is being done. When there is a concern about a child's offending behaviour, a referral can still be made to the children's diversion forum, which is a multi-agency panel that is available region-wide in Northern Ireland. Those panels and the other partnership arrangements are exactly the kinds of structures that will be considered as potential models for working with children under any new age of criminal responsibility, but their purpose has to be clear.”
“<BR /> <BR />The barrier to reform is not the principle but capacity right now, and I acknowledge that. The system already knows what works. It is early intervention, trusted relationships, therapeutic support and family work. The question is whether the Executive are in a position or prefer to fund reform and organise it properly. I believe that there is a will there on the basis of the conversations that I have been privy to between the Department of Justice, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health in particular. <BR /> <BR />Yes, raising MACR is about legal reform, but it is not only about legal reform. It is credible only if it is accompanied by investment and a reconfiguration of youth work, family support, therapeutic support, education support, victim support and a multi-agency pathway.”
“<BR /> <BR />The Safeguarding Board put this challenge to me clearly in our meeting: where do those children go? When I met the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, it warned me that public attitudes are hardening, which is being driven by fear and misunderstanding. I have to highlight the narrative that has been pushed by certain individuals over the past few weeks. The PSNI warned that public confidence will be undermined if people do not understand what replaces criminalisation, so we have to be honest with the public and say that we are making criminal behaviour illegal. To say that there is no response, no consequence, no victim support and no accountability is dangerous and will impact on the public's view of their level of safety, even though we are showing them evidence to the contrary.”
“If we are serious about preventing harm, reducing reoffending and protecting future victims, the focus must be on earlier and more effective intervention before a child is drawn into the formal justice system. <BR /> <BR />I will move on to system readiness, some of which has been mentioned already today. I agree with many of the concerns that Members have raised previously. Raising the age cannot mean that there is a gap, and the Committee Chair spoke about that before. It cannot mean a vague promise that someone, somewhere will do something. It cannot mean pushing responsibility on to those who are already stretched — social workers, people in schools, youth workers and people in voluntary organisations — without giving them powers, resources and clarity.”
“I will continue on this point, and then I will come back to the Member. <BR /> <BR />Taken together — the Minister has just spoken about a lot of this — the evidence tells us three things. First, prosecution is already not the dominant response, and the system already relies heavily on diversion. We need the law to catch up and give consistency and clarity. Secondly, truly serious cases involving this age cohort of young people are very rare, and, when they happen, serious harm is not being denied. Thirdly, intervention still comes too late. If the system frequently steps back from prosecution in favour of diversion and sometimes does so only after a child has entered a court setting, the logical question is whether we are intervening at the right point.”
“The point that I have made continually when I have been asked questions similar to that is that, yes, diversionary work is already being engaged in, but it is not consistent. The law has to catch up with what, the experts who do that brilliant diversionary work say, they need. They need that protection and the law to follow what they are already doing.”
“There is staggering there that means that we need to intervene earlier, before that behaviour is entrenched. That is what I see when I look at that data.”
“Surely the fact that children entering the justice process are given a diversionary intervention at a later date shows that we are already doing the diversionary work, even, at times, after a child has experienced the trauma of being criminalised. <BR /> <BR />The last recorded data from the PPS, which is for 2024-25, shows that there were 654 prosecutorial decision events involving children aged 10 to 13. When we look at the breakdown, we see that 34 involved 10-year-olds, 75 involved 11-year-olds, 194 involved 12-year-olds and 351 involved 13-year-olds.”
“If we are to make good law, we need to understand the scale of the issue, the age of the children involved and how the system currently responds. The figures simply do not support the narrative that large numbers of very young children are running wild without consequence. However, neither do they show that no children are entering the justice system. What they show is something much more nuanced: there is a relatively small cohort of young children, some appearing more than once, in a system that already relies heavily on diversion rather than prosecution, sometimes after a child has already entered the formal process. That points to the reason why we need this law change.”
“The evidence and the data point to the fact that it is. I believe that it is, and many others around the Chamber believe that it is. Secondly, we need to address implementation. What system do we build to respond to harm, to support victims, to safeguard children and to prevent reoffending? Those are not the same, but they are linked. The need to build such a system should not be used to avoid a decision of principle. The Minister of Justice has set out a responsible approach: legislate, but do not commence the legislation until an appropriate, victim-aware framework is in place. The choice is not between making an immediate change or putting the issue to one side without a plan and leaving it at age 10 indefinitely. That is a false choice. <BR /> <BR />I want to move on to data. I have just made a point about the evidence.”
“Yes, expert-led, evidence-driven policy. We have the evidence and the data, yet we are being told that this is pie in the sky. I think that the phrase "beyond stupid" was used. <BR /> <BR />I want to talk briefly about Together for Families because, for me, it represents a move that is key to all of this, in that it is about being joined up, trauma-informed, practical and local. We have to be honest: Together for Families is still developing, and we do not yet know the answer to every challenge. However, for me, it shows that the Executive already recognise a basic truth: supporting families early is better than waiting for a crisis. <BR /> <BR />We have to be really clear about the sequence of events. First, the Assembly has to answer this question of principle: is 10 too young to be held criminally responsible?”
“Absolutely. That is the point that we are making here. It is not about which approach is seen as tougher; it is about which approach will give us the best outcome when we have the evidence before us. I will go back to some Members who talk about the need for evidence-driven policy.”
“At no point did I say that the Youth Justice Agency is anything other than the things that you said it is. What I am saying is that the law needs to catch up with the diversionary elements that it already engages in. <BR /> <BR />The other point that I want to raise is about the direction of Together for Families. That is a really important project and policy move that looks at providing the right help at the right time in the right place.”
“The police who were there in the room on the day when I went up and met them all said, "We can't believe the difference. We have never seen anything like this". <BR /> <BR />That is an example of what happens when you pool the resources of different Departments and approaches. As a youth practitioner — you can take the girl out of youth work. but you cannot take youth work out of the girl — I know how important it is to have someone doing that relationship-building and trust-building work in places where social services are sometimes not accepted and are met with a degree of fear and —.”
“Most importantly, however, I went up and met one of the young people and his mother, and his life had been transformed by this multidisciplinary approach of youth practitioners, social workers, the PSNI and others. He was back in full-time education, whereas, when he first came to the attention of the family support service, he was on reduced hours and, along with 12 of his peers, he had the threat of dissident republicans hanging over his head. The effect of that sustained programme of multidisciplinary approaches was incredible. At the end of the programme, which worked with him and his family, the threat from dissident republican paramilitaries was lifted from all 13 of those young men because of the change in their offending behaviour.”
“That leads me to a great example that I witnessed. I went to the Western Trust area to visit one of the areas in Derry/Londonderry that, I suggest, is probably best known on the news for some of that activity and particularly for young people being drawn into violence. The family response service supports families at a really early stage. It draws funding from the health service, the community and voluntary sector and others. It supports families really early, and it has a multidisciplinary team. It has youth practitioners, who come from the Department of Education, and social workers. That multidisciplinary team engages with police officers. It is all about building trust through sustained relationship work. The outcomes are so significant. There was a reduction in antisocial behaviour and stronger family engagement.”
“My point is that so much of that already happens, but, when I speak to those who work in the justice system, they say, "We need the law to catch up. We need the law to give us consistency and clarity on what we do that is outside the scope of the justice system. So much of what we're doing is actually a health response. What I'm doing, as a youth worker in a prison, is actually an education response". My point is that we need to look at this holistically first, and then at how we can take it out of a criminalisation frame of reference and move it into an intervention.”
“The Department of Health has said that most of those children are already known. My point is that, if we criminalise young people at the age of 10, we are missing the opportunity at that point for the issue to be moved out of the justice system and into a health setting. There should be primarily a health response through social services and an education response with regard to what red flags are seen. What early intervention is being put in place for a child at every possible stage and not when it becomes a justice issue? That is my point.”
“That is why I truly believe that a child's first serious intervention should not be with a police officer at a police station or at a court; it should be in a school, with family or in a health or community setting.”
“Rather than treating school absence as solely a disciplinary issue, it is so much more helpful to put the focus on why a child is not in school, what safety concerns there may be and what support would help at an individual or family level. The data makes that clear. In 2024-25, overall attendance was 92·1%, but we have to look at where that absence is distributed. It is not distributed evenly; it is significantly higher among children with care experience, pupils who are entitled to free school meals, pupils with special educational needs and Irish Traveller children. Whilst we should never reduce children to statistics, the pattern matters. Disconnection from school is often linked to trauma, poverty, unmet need and marginalisation. Early action really makes a difference.”
“The Education Authority (EA) emphasised that it is engaged in a trauma-informed restorative approach, focusing on understanding why a child behaves as they do. As the EA put it, the issue is not the labels but the growing number of children experiencing trauma from an early age. If we label a child without addressing what lies beneath, we solve nothing. If schools are seeing those pressures long before justice involvement, MACR reform is not just a justice issue; it is an education, health, social care, youth work and family support issue. <BR /> <BR />The Department of Health stated that the issues can be identified much earlier and that it sees school absence as a key indicator.”
“Without understanding the drivers of a behaviour, we cannot prevent that behaviour from happening. <BR /> <BR />Women's Aid made the same point from the perspective of domestic abuse: that it is too late once a child reaches the criminal justice system because children can absorb fear, coercion and violence long before they can articulate it, learning patterns of control or aggression from their environment. Again, that does not excuse harm, but, if we want to stop it being repeated, we have to intervene before those patterns are set. Responsibility for that spans every Department and every part of society, and it does not just mean criminalisation. <BR /> <BR />The 3ducation evidence tells the same story: schools are already dealing with increasingly complex needs, trauma, absence and safeguarding concerns.”
“Across stakeholder engagement in preparing the amendment, the message was clear: the system is meeting too many children too late. Harmful behaviour is often preceded by trauma, poor attendance, family stress, unmet mental health needs, care experience and exploitation. Those are warning signs, and, if we ignore them, we should not be surprised when problems escalate. The Department of Health described many of the children who are in contact with the justice system as children who are already in need, facing adverse childhood experiences, trauma and deprivation. The Safeguarding Board responded to me frankly, saying that we have to move away from asking, "What did you do?", to also asking, "What happened to you?". That is not a soft question, and it is not about just the child; that is a safety question.”
“When should it have seen them? If we are serious about preventing harm, we cannot focus solely on what happens after a child reaches a police station, courtroom or the Youth Justice Agency. We have to look for it earlier, and we have to intervene. It goes back to my response to the Committee Chair: we have to look earlier. What are the warning signs? Who knew that the child was suffering? We cannot keep calling it early intervention if the first meaningful response comes after a child has entered the justice system. That is crisis response.”
“It is my hope that that is going to be tackled through other pieces of the Minister's Justice Bill. The focus has to be on who is pulling the strings. I was a youth worker in east Belfast in 2012 at the heart of what were called "the flag protests". I will never forget a young person saying to me, "It's the men who tell us to come down here". They pointed to the flat in which the men stood and watched them. The young person went on to say, "They don't get a tag on their ankle, and they don't get a record, but I have". That is at the absolute heart of this. We need to go for those who are pulling the strings and doing the damage. <BR /> <BR />I want to move on from the evidence on criminalisation and reoffending to the practical question that is at the heart of the debate: when does the system first see these children?”
“If the current system is already failing to identify exploited children consistently, Members should ask themselves this question: is the answer to defend the current law as if it is working, or is it to build a clearer, stronger, child-centred and victim-aware framework that protects children, supports victims and goes after the adults who are doing the exploiting?”
“I do not think that that is relevant to the point that I was making, which is around CCE. That is slightly different. We are not saying that this is removing accountability or removing the victim from the centre. If you had been here, you would have heard me talk about reparation and about how restorative practice can be seen as being the soft option when it is not. Restorative practice is sometimes the harder option. Not all victims think the same, because not all victims experience crime in the same way. <BR /> <BR />I will move on. Child criminal exploitation is not a hypothetical risk created by this amendment. It is the current reality, as evidenced by the CJINI report.”
“Let me continue for a second. I spoke to Scottish Government officials — it is a little bit on your point. We cannot say that Scotland is exactly the same as Northern Ireland, but there are some similarities, particularly around Glasgow and the organised gangs, especially drug gangs. They did not see a notable increase when they changed their minimum age. It was one of the issues that was brought up before they changed their law — they thought that they would see an influx in the 10- to 12-year-old cohort, but they did not. That gave me reassurance, because their experience is fairly relevant, and it challenges the argument that reform automatically creates a free-for-all for gangs or paramilitaries. I give way.”
“That relies on the notion that if we raise the MACR, we remove accountability and safeguarding. I do not see that as being the case. The Minister has already been clear that there will be a framework in place, if the law is passed this week and, eventually, put on the statute book. That framework will have to be in place, so we will have a chance to intervene earlier. That is how I see it; that is what I believe a framework would do.”