Ms Caroline Redpath:

To pick up on what Mr. Burke said with regard to value for money, we can do a significant amount with just a small amount of money. In the voluntary youth sector, our organisation brings in £9.32 for every £1 we get of public funding. We are an ambitious organisation, like Youth Work Ireland. We are ambitious for young people and need to be in the context of the challenges facing young people currently.

In terms of cross-Border work, we work together with Youth Work Ireland. Much of our work is in the context of the movement of populations of young people into other communities to develop their confidence. Self-confidence is a big issue for young people. We have been recruiting young people through job centres recently for one of our employability programmes. They felt that lack of confidence was the biggest factor in stopping them from getting work. They did not consider qualifications or education as so significant. Confidence in themselves and what they could do was the major factor.

With regard to engaging young people in democracy, we are very interested in the Rock the Vote campaign that was part of the presidential elections in America. We have got involved with that and believe it would be wonderful to bring that campaign to Ireland, North and South. That campaign engages pop stars like Madonna and various others to make voting sexy and to engage young people. These are things we have to do. I was sent to the Department of Regional Development to promote cycling for young people, but that, like voting, is not seen as something cool. Perhaps "cool" is a better word to use than "sexy".

On the sexualisation of young women, there are a couple of factors involved here. There is a vacuum in the North in terms of women and leadership. Obviously, Michelle Gildernew is the exception in terms of a positive role model for young women. We take various approaches in working with young men and women in terms of gender stereotyping. We try to educate them through the use of positive images. We do this in a practical way, by having them create positive images of young men and women that depart from the gender stereotype, leaving out the make-up and other ways the media suggest they should portray themselves.

On the issue of compulsory voting, rather than persuading people to agree to compulsory voting, we need to nurture young people earlier. We need to engage with them in their communities through local campaigns and to inform them of what is going on and deal with local issues like transport. On schools, I agree these should be integrated. This is a no-brainer. Young people are growing up segregated and are not meeting each other until they go into higher education. That is crazy and has a major impact on relationships in our communities.