Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)

In my constituency of Dublin South Central, particularly the inner city parts of it, 29% of people left school before doing junior certificate examinations. My past experience was as a voluntary youth worker in a community. When children leave school at a young age, they hang around during the day and this continues into the night time. In the evening time many youth and outreach workers in facilities in the area do not stay after 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., which has become a major problem. They stay until it is time to clock out at 7 p.m. after which young people stand around. This continues until the early hours of the morning and can create other problems for residents in the area. My main concern is that there should be no cutback in the school completion programme. It is an area on which we need to focus and give it as much funding and help as possible.

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