Mr. Stephen Sharpe:

The issues within recruitment have been coming down the road for a while. We could see them coming a couple of years ago. One of the suggestions we made to the City of Dublin Youth Services Board was to develop some sort of internship or apprenticeship programme. I was doing youth work before I was qualified to do it. Back then, community employment schemes were a great way for people to get their first experience of that type of work. That is not really the case any more. It is more about younger people doing a degree and then coming out to work without having any real experience. We have a small team and we need to employ someone with experience. Having a number of positions around the country that would give people a chance to spend a year or two in an internship could start to increase the numbers with that experience. The other problem is that positions do not often become available because it is a small sector. People are not going to wait around and will instead move into other aspects of work.