Ms Carol Hanney:

I will take question on youth services. Yes, we fund youth services in the city of Dublin. It has been very challenging for youth services because in the first lockdown the youth services were making every effort they could to try to keep in contact with young people. Again, a lot of the contact was on phones, but they are now going back to delivering a service that is more like what they delivered before. It is, however, quite curtailed.

Another aspect of the youth services involves training young people in how to deal with a crisis, wearing their masks and so on, so it plays a very important part. We have also been linking our second level schools with the youth services in order that they can work together. We ran an infection prevention and control course through one of our colleges, Coláiste Íde, and we offered that to our youth service personnel to allow them to upskill in that area.

On the back to education allowance, we do not have a say as to who gets it. There are other options. If people cannot get the allowance, we steer them towards courses on the vocational training opportunities scheme, other grants that may be available, for example, SUSI grants, etc.