Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 December 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children

Children and Youth Issues: Minister for Children and Youth Affairs

11:15 am

Photo of Catherine ByrneCatherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The early childhood care funding for three to five-year-olds is welcome and will make a significant difference to many parents crippled with large mortgages. They will now be able to put their children into child care at an earlier age. It has had a major impact on the ground and that is what I am hearing at the doors.

The Minister said over 400 new staff will be appointed at the Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. What will be the make-up of that staff? I also welcome the launch of the national youth strategy. It was an important that it was launched when it was because we are in a crisis with young people on the ground, particularly with addiction, young people involved with gangs and anti-social behaviour. This leads on to building a better place for children in this country.

As we enter 2016 - it will soon be 100 years since the State was formed - if one looks back into the history of that time, there was poverty and neglect with children reared in slums. We have come a far way since then. I have read much about people’s stories about 1916 and how they have lived, worked and reared their children since then. Even though some of the stuff was bad regarding religious orders, we sometimes neglect to say there were many children who would never have had any education but for the effort put in by the religious orders.

When I was 18, I visited the Oberstown Centre when it was run by the Oblate Fathers at the time. I have spoken to many people who work in the prison service dealing with youths. When the new campus was opened at Oberstown, it was long awaited because of the condition of the old campus. Are the staff there properly trained to deal with some of the young people who will come out of St. Patrick's Institution? Not criminalising them all together, but they are different cohort coming from St. Patrick’s Institution into what used to be a detention centre for young people with problems. I am concerned about the difficulties.

I also want to raise the amounts given by the special projects for youths, the youth facility services fund and the local drugs task forces to youth services in my constituency, Dublin 8, 10 and 12. Significant sums of money have been transferred into these community groups. Although I know most of the groups, some of them better than others, I have concerns about the duplication of some services. When an application is made for an allocation of funding, who makes the decision which group gets the funding? Who cuts the cloth and decides one group gets €100,000 or another gets €31,000? In all my time as a council member and a Dáil Member, I have never been asked by any Department or service what I thought of any of these groups, how they function or if they function. I have never been asked as a public representative do these groups work, have I seen them working as someone who has been working on the ground with young people all of my life. How is the decision made to give these allocations of funding to groups? Is it made by a particular unit in the Department? Do those involved visit the services? Have they the history of these services?

I thank the Minister for his participation at these meetings because I find them rewarding. I compliment his staff, as well as his predecessor, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald. A significant amount of work has been done with young people on the ground.

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