Oberstown, the north Co Dublin detention campus for youth offenders, paid €84,000 to an executive search recruitment agent to fill a senior role that ultimately remained vacant.
Due to the inability to find a chief people officer, the centre hired industrial relations consultants to provide certain services at a cost of €146,000.
The provision of the executive search service and the supply of the industrial relations consultancy should been awarded and sanctioned under standard procurement processes.
However, neither went through that system in 2023 or 2024. Management at Oberstown has said it will “ensure procurement guidelines are followed” in the future.
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Efforts to recruit a chief people officer were eventually abandoned, though an interim candidate was put in place for a year, until March 2024, as a stopgap measure. Oberstown then decided to recruit a head of human resources instead. That position was filled last year after a process run by the State Public Jobs service, with no executive search agents involved.
The agent engaged for the effort to recruit the chief people officer was paid in two tranches in 2023 and 2024. Oberstown said the process “did not ultimately result in a permanent appointment”. The industrial relations consultancy fees were also paid over the two years.
Oberstown provides care and education to young people on detention or remand orders from the courts. It has 46 beds, 40 for boys and six for girls. It has no legal power to admit more than that because its capacity is limited by a certificate from the Minister for Children.
The centre is almost always full to capacity, resulting in judges having no option but to release youth offenders, some of them before the courts on multiple serious charges, because there is no space for them in the facility.
Garda sources said the force’s work in bringing the worst youth offenders to justice is frequently being undermined because those young people know there is no space for them in custody. In some cases, youth offenders capture video footage of their crimes and post it on social media with the tag #obserstown to taunt gardaí.
In reply to queries, Oberstown, via a public relations company, said the payments to the executive search agency and the industrial relations consultants “arose in exceptional circumstances” and are now reported in its annual accounts “in line with public sector requirements”.
It added that as the chief people officer post could not be filled, this resulted in the need to engage industrial relations consultants “on a temporary basis to ensure continuity”.
The Department of Children, under whose remit Oberstown operates, said the recruitment of a chief people officer was essential for the continued successful operation of the Oberstown campus.
“Oberstown deals regularly with industrial relations matters, and the recruitment of staff is a priority for both Oberstown and the department to ensure continuity of service provision to the young people detained,” it added.
The human resources section “is running very well” since a head of HR was appointed last July, “especially given the challenging market it operates within”. The costs incurred before the role was filled were “a reflection of the reality of the challenging job market in Ireland today”.
