Mr. Eddie D'Arcy:

I will take the UBU question. There are two difficulties with the UBU for us. They have to be labelled before we are allowed work with them which in effect is a negative thing for those young people. They have to be labelled as a Traveller, early school leaver or a young mother, for example. To me that is a difficulty initially. On the terms of the funding, the Deputy’s Government recently made the decision that it will set aside €1.2 million for ten new UBUs. That works out at €120,000 per new project. I know every single project under Youth Work Ireland and many of the projects in Dublin have signed up to say they will not tender for those projects because the level of money is completely and totally ridiculous. The Government is setting the project up to fail from day one. In fact, we would prefer if the money was used to bolster the existing projects. The letter that went out under which they were set out initially was far too tight and many of the projects are really struggling financially. On UBU, it is important there is a system there to fund the youth projects on the ground but there has to be realistic funding. We are all professionals. We all do our degree in college and we come to work in a very difficult sector. We work unsociable hours. The level of funding there does not pay us anywhere like as if we were working for the State.