Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue of support for youth services and I know the services to which he refers. I have been to The Base in Ballyfermot and I know the work of the Ballyfermot Youth Services and I want to support as much as I possibly can the work done by youth services in Dublin and throughout the country. I recognise its value and would like to be investing more in it if that was feasible.

In 2013 my Department will provide funding of €53.173 million to support the provision of youth services and programmes throughout the country, including in particular, as the Deputy rightly says, in disadvantaged communities. That funding supports national and local youth work. There are approximately 1,400 paid staff, 40,000 volunteers and 400,000 young people participating in youth services and activities. We need to give more exposure to the work and make sure that youth work is recognised for the continuum of services it gives to young people. It has a huge role to play which I will focus on during my EU presidency of the Youth Council to help young people participate in training and eventually employment as well. That aspect of youth work increasingly needs attention.

As in all areas of the public sector, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs has had to find savings as part of the comprehensive review of expenditure, CRE. We must play our part as part of the collective Government effort to reduce our unsustainable day-to-day deficit. That is the reality for my Department as well as others. The CRE, published in December 2011, set out clearly the savings required for my Department in each of the years, 2012 to 2014. I published that, along with the detail of what would happen to all of this funding over that three year period. That was known to everybody involved. When we published the review we had a seven page chapter outlining the savings we required from the youth work funding schemes and it came to close to 10%. The bodies who administer these grants on behalf of the Department were notified about this and would have been familiar with what was in the CRE for the three year period in question. In the course of the past few weeks and months I have met with representatives of the youth sector with a view to determining how best to minimise the impact of the reduction in the 2013 budget on youth services, given the challenging budgetary situation we face. The administering bodies have been asked to examine issues such as salary levels, conditions, administrative costs across projects and services, if these have not already been addressed.

As far as possible I want to protect the front line services that youth workers and services provide to very vulnerable young people. In order to try to maximise the use of the funding available for youth services and programmes I have given flexibility to the local bodies which administer the grants, normally the VECs, to propose the reconfiguration of the allocations provided, having regard to the knowledge available to these bodies about the needs of young people at local level. There is flexibility built in to the bodies which administer the schemes to examine each project and come back to me with recommendations. As the Deputy says it comes back to me in the end.

In that context last week the City of Dublin Youth Service Board, as the local grant administering body in the Dublin area, submitted a proposal to the Department requesting that percentage reductions, different from those outlined in the CRE, would be applied to projects in the Dublin area. Their rationale, as they said to me, was to minimise the disruption to services and they said they had examined each of the projects and made recommendations based on the examination of those projects. In their analysis the majority of projects would receive cuts of less than 10%, many would be cut for example by 2%. They paid particular attention to the smaller projects and wanted to ensure they would continue because they felt they were providing a valuable service. They also said that some of the larger projects would receive greater reductions, hence the projects the Deputy mentioned which are receiving larger funding. I appreciate that they have made huge efforts to manage within that funding. That is the recommendation that has come to me.

I am examining the proposals from the City of Dublin Youth Service Board. My Department officials met last Friday with the board and we are examining the proposals that have been submitted.

There is no cut at present for the local voluntary youth clubs. Some other funding has been made available for the support of youth work this year. I am examining the proposals and the approach of the board and I will make a decision shortly. I take on board the points made about the value of the services being provided.

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