Ms Sinéad Keane:

We work collaboratively with Youth Work Ireland, with Dr. Burke and Crosscare to deliver youth information chats. This is a service that was set up in 2020, at the beginning of Covid, to offer that kind of space for young people to come and have chats with youth information officers about issues that matter to them, for example, finances and employment. They would be able to get real-time personalised support on issues that were important to them. In the last year, we had more than 1,000 chats on the service. There is a real demand and need for it. Like the Senator said, young people, like us all, go online and it can be hard to know if what we are reading is accurate or not, so having dedicated youth information officers who are provided by the different organisations here helps. We had SpunOut look after youth engagement on the marketing and technology side. Dr. Burke might be able to speak more about youth information officers.