Dr. Sinead McMahon:

The population of young people is dispersed. There are a number of towns and villages where there are high levels of disadvantage and where young people face really challenging issues around addiction, lack of support services and lack of transport to reach the support services. On the other side, in terms of the youth work response to that, there are massive challenges in funding. Funding rural services is complex anyway. The cost of trying to cover large areas across a county is challenging. Some youth workers can spend many hours travelling from one project to another because the youth population in one area does not sustain a full-time project. That brings complexities to service delivery and increases costs. That is something that has to be looked at in terms of the proper funding of rural youth services. NYCI did a study on rural youth work in 2019 and has made a number of recommendations around this.

On the youth policy question, the overarching strategy for children and young people, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures, is due to be replaced. There is currently a blueprint to do that. That provides a huge opportunity to amplify the role of youth work in addressing the needs of young people in Ireland. In conjunction with that, youth work needs a particular policy strategy and policy direction to harness its contribution, and its particular distinctiveness needs to be protected.

On the question about volunteering, I have been a volunteer myself. I have volunteered on boards and youth work organisations, etc. I am sure many of us here have done that, and we know the work involved in being a volunteer. Some of the challenges people now face with volunteering is that while they do it to give back, they have often put in a day's work when they come to volunteer their time, and now there can be governance rules about making applications for quite small sums of money to run a youth club, like €500 for the year, which involve huge amounts of paperwork for people who have just left a job they have been working in all day. It is like more work for people. That can be a little off-putting. The reasons people do and do not volunteer are complex but I suggest that is one issue to look at.

We are also definitely facing a crisis in the retention of youth workers. I was having this discussion with people in County Tipperary. It is imminent, with the numbers of positions. Ms Dunne mentioned 9% vacancies in Dublin. We do not have those data for rural youth organisations. However, anecdotally my discussions suggest people are finding it very difficult to recruit. We also do not have that supply of youth workers in rural areas, so I would suggest it is even more difficult.