The Minister for Justice has said the number of accommodation units available for children who are being remanded in custody needs to be increased.
Jim O'Callaghan said he was "very concerned" to hear there was no space for two juveniles in Oberstown Children Detention Campus at the weekend.
The 17-year-olds were accused, along with two adults, of being armed with a machine gun during a burglary in Shankill in Co Dublin last week.
They were refused bail after the judge heard that a 60-year-old man was "savagely" beaten in front of his family during the burglary.
When it transpired that Oberstown did not have any room, the teenagers were released on bail and subject to "house arrest" until their appearance on Monday at the Children's Court.
However, one of the boys - released on Saturday night - failed to attend his court hearing yesterday, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Minister O'Callaghan said: "We need to ensure that if people under 18 years of age are charged with very serious offences that there's accommodation and places available for them to be remanded in custody, and it's a failure that that wasn't available at the weekend."
"We need to increase the number of accommodation units available for children who are being remanded in custody," he added.
Executive Director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust Saoirse Brady has said something similar to the bail supervision scheme needs to be considered, or the creation of more secure beds.
Speaking on RTÉ's News At One, she said while she could not comment on individual cases, "judges have been calling this issue out for quite a long time now around the lack of availability of bed spaces in Oberstown for those who may pose a risk to public safety".
She said recent figures show that on any average day in May in Oberstown Children Detention Campus, one in three young people were held on remand, meaning they had not been convicted of any offence.
"We need to look at those figures because the Children's Act is very clear, the legislation is very clear, that detention should always be a last resort for children.
"So, we need to have a bit of an audit there I think because what we do know is where the bail supervision scheme is available in Dublin, Limerick and Cork, judges are availing of it and using it to deal with the underlying root causes of criminality by providing an intervention."
Ms Brady said it is very effective, not for everyone but for some, including those who are held for more serious offences.
However she said it is not available in rural locations and as a result they are seeing young people from rural areas going into Oberstown for less serious offences which "blocks those beds".
She said the issue is not just about beds, it is also about staffing and the resources that have to go with it.
