Ms Mary Cunningham:

At the time of the crash, youth work suffered really badly. Over successive years, funding was cut by 40%. The impact of that was not really that evident because, where youth workers' paid hours were being reduced, they were supplementing that with voluntary hours to try to meet the needs of the young people. That makes it really difficult when you are trying to make your case. Nobody in youth work is going to down tools, notwithstanding the point that was made about potentially needing to organise ourselves. A youth centre is not going to close and leave young people without a facility or service. Across the country, including in youth information, people's hours have been cut because there is just not enough funding.

There have been year-on-year increases in the funding over the past five years or so. However, on the value of the money,, 2011 was kind of when the cuts were arrested. Then there were a number of years when there was no significant increase, but the cuts had stopped. The amount of money that is funding youth work currently is at about the same level as 2011. As a result, it is not addressing the need to develop new services and expand existing services, the growing population of young people and the increasingly complex needs of some young people. To give an example in relation to the purpose of youth night - it is a really excellent opportunity, and I hope members of the committee will take the opportunity to visit their local youth organisations on 21 November - what we really needed to make clear to the Department was that it cannot be about generating additional demand because there is no supply to meet it.