Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in to take questions. Much of what I am going to cover has been touched on already. In particular, I wanted to raise the issue of youth services. When I saw the Estimates, I was quite disappointed that the Minister had not provided more in regard to youth services. There was an increase of €1.5 million on the €65 million but that was balanced by the decrease of €1.5 million on the €6 million for the children and youth policy programme. With Covid, what we saw was that our youth were severely impacted and, for much of the Covid period, they were not top of our minds and our initial response had very much a health focus. The issues relating to children and how this impacted on children and young people were largely forgotten.

As the Minister stated, there were services and they did not stop. I would have liked to have seen was more money being put in to assist those services and to help them reach more children, because it is really important that we make those linkages. I expect that young people have a lot of pent-up issues and, as the Minister is aware, sometimes it can take time for these issues to manifest. It would be good to have a greater focus on how we can support these young people.

I have written to the Minister previously about some of the programmes in place for young people, and how the funding is being allocated. It came as a surprise to me when the Minister talked about targeted funding to a particular communities. It appears that this targeting is based on Pobal data from 2016 and also the level of social housing within certain areas. The face of disadvantage is changing and our communities are changing. With Government policy moving away from the building of social housing towards a more privatised approach through the HAP scheme, the fact that housing is not taken into account in the allocation of funding for youth services is a big gap.

In my county of Wicklow, there has been a huge increase in population over the last number of years and there is a significant number of HAP scheme premises. It would appear that the funding has been stretched further and further in these areas. I have been approached by a number of service providers in Wicklow seeking assistance, because the youth service is being expanded further into the county, yet additional funding is not being provided and it is going to impact on them severely. Will the Department review how that funding is allocated and take into account not just social housing but also HAP and other criteria in order to identify where it needs to be allocated?

I echo what Deputy Ward said about the takeover of the St. John of God home by the HSE. This issue has been raised with me. We have a year in which to get something in place. It is important that there is a focus. Although it is not directly within the Minister's remit, in his role as champion for children, and with the ability to facilitate things together with other Departments, I ask him to engage with his ministerial colleagues and work with them to come up with a solution. We are very focused on Covid at the moment. There is a risk that this issue will be parked for a few months and that it will become more difficult to address. The St. John of God home provides a fantastic service, particularly in respect of children. It is key that we get ahead of the problem.

In relation to the budget and the Revised Estimates, there are direct Covid increases. Those increases represent funding that probably always should have been allocated because Covid just exposed very much the weaknesses in our system. Where we see Covid-related increases in the Estimates reflects money that should be allocated as standard. Is the Minister taking any of the lessons from this and putting them into play in the context of the next budget? Perhaps that we should be taking the lessons from Covid and bringing them forward. I include budgetary lessons in that regard.