Why aren't parents held liable for torts committed by children in Ireland?

Its like this with a lot of things in Ireland and other countries too.

If you yourself get into trouble and cause a bit of damage and you have some assets like a decent car and a house and a few quid in the bank and you're an honest lad you might decide to settle out of court, you are likely to have little experience with the justice system and your friends probably dont either. So you'll cough up your 5 or 10k or whatever it is and count yourself lucky they didn't come after the house/car/whatever and you were saved the trouble & embarrassment of having to take one or more days off work to go into court.

However if you are a "gurrier" or all your friends are "gurriers" and you don't have many assets things are a little different. You might not be working full time or at all so you can divert all your energy into kicking back and fighting your case. One of your gurrier friends was probably in a similar situation and he will provide you with help and moral support. You probably won't own a house so any assets you do have you can start making these harder for the powers that be to get at. You don't settle out of court, you get free legal aid, you'll try to get off the hook through any means possible. If you fail you'll claim you don't have the money & that you have mouths to feed at home. So you might get put on an installment plan where you make a certain payment every month to pay for the damage. This is if you're unlucky enough to be found guilty. You can stop paying the installments when you reckon the victim has "enough money" so that they won't bother going through the court system to retrieve the remainder of it.

Torts? Is that D4 for a small baked pastery with jam filling?