Mr. John Gilmore:

Mr. Burke spoke about the local youth club being important in rural areas. We lobbied for youth club support not to be touched in the budget and welcomed that it was not. However, a minimal amount of money is given to rural youth clubs which are led by volunteers like me in local communities who give up their time for young people. It is a hugely important area which needs investment and support in order that it can continue to flourish.

With regard to the projects in which we have engaged to access local people, one project was very innovative. Kerry Diocesan Youth Service has a mobile youth café which it built from scratch. It travels around some of the rural areas that do not have a youth project or youth café to provide services. Again, it was a youth-led initiative whereby young people were able to interact and design the idea.

It is welcome that the LGBT youth work issue was raised. Youth Work Ireland has a network of 12 LGBT youth projects. My engagement with Youth Work Ireland at a primary level was in setting up, as a volunteer, an LGBT youth project with Youth Work Ireland in Galway. It was when I worked in the equality area in the university. It is a huge sector. There are numerous pieces of research on young gay men, gay women and transgender people and the issues of coming out, gender identity, the difficulties in that regard and the importance of trying to provide social support. Our organisation is the primary provider of LGBT youth services through our strategic partners BeLonGTo where funding is channelled, but there is still no mainstream funding for regional LGBT youth work services. Our approach, like that to all our projects, is to engage LGBT young people as part of an integrated service within these specialised projects. They engage in the service as a whole. A big concern for us is that because the money has dried up, in essence, for many of our projects, particularly some in Donegal, Galway and Waterford, there is no funding available. They are trying to fund-raise, scrimp and save and take money from other projects to support these highly vulnerable and at risk young people who have a huge amount to give. It is just a question of adding that support.