Dr. Sharon Lambert:

Yes. The nature of sexual offending has also changed. We now have more younger people engaged in sexual offending than we had before because young people, unfortunately, are being exposed to inappropriate material on the Internet. Their understanding of whether that is inappropriate content or not is challenging. There are young people who are involved in quite immature but harmful behaviour. One wants to ensure that they have a happy, healthy future too. It is about ensuring that whoever is involved in the process understands the difference.

When I worked in the Garda diversion project, we had people, young people, who were not prosecuted. For example, we had someone who had an intellectual disability.