Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Our first item for discussion is the work of Youth Work Ireland and Youth Action Northern Ireland, YANI, in supporting young people. I am delighted they are present in a joint capacity. Youth work is an area in which I am interested as a former youth worker and community development worker. Our guests are speaking to the converted. Given the community and civic work done by the committee's members, they undoubtedly have an interest in this issue.

I am pleased to welcome from Youth Work Ireland Mr. Patrick Burke, CEO, Mr. John Gilmore, president, and Mr. Michael McLoughlin, head of advocacy and communications. From YANI, I welcome Ms Caroline Redpath and Mr. Martin McMullan, assistant directors. I have a great preamble ready about what the organisations do, but I will discard it as the delegates will give a presentation on the good work in which they are involved.

I advise delegates that when I invite them to make their presentations, they will be protected by absolute privilege in respect of utterances at this committee. However, if they are directed by the committee to cease making remarks on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of their remarks. They are directed that only comments and evidence related to the subject matter of this meeting are to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against a Member of either House of the Oireachtas, a person outside the Houses or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Before I call on Mr. Gilmore to start proceedings, I will give the delegates an idea of the committee's approach. We sit once a month, but we also do a bit of outreach work and try to visit Northern Ireland. Recently, we visited Unionist, loyalist and Nationalist communities in east, north and south Belfast. We still need to conduct an evaluation, which we will do in private session after today's presentations. Our visits were interesting.

We are concerned about the issues on the ground. While driving home to Donegal last Thursday, I came across 16, 17 and 18 year olds in Omagh. Matters are not pigeon-holed into Belfast. We are quite concerned about the entire dynamic and questions will be asked at this meeting in that regard.

I invite Mr. Gilmore to make his presentation.