Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 12 November 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Youth

Implementation of National Youth Strategy: Discussion

2:00 am

Gareth Scahill (Fine Gael)

I will be quick. Senator Tully spoke earlier about capital and the witnesses referred to ongoing capital projects. We have a community youth facility in Castlerea in Roscommon. Youth Work Ireland is the current tenant. We have a great working relationship. That is all going well. As a community group, we applied to the climate action fund and were able to retrofit and bring the facility up to scratch. We hit a problem, which would be the same as the witnesses hitting a problem in relation to capital. We got 100% funding but had to pay out the money to get it back. I have hit a brick wall. I am trying to access a credit union loan in order to pay for it. As a limited company, there are issues with getting a loan. There must be easier ways to support the witnesses' organisations. That is what I will take away from this whole discussion. What I want to know is if there are areas of the country where people are still struggling to access youth services.

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