Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Heydon for raising these issues which, as he has said, we have spoken about several times.

My Department provides funding for schemes and programmes to support youth services. These services are for young people throughout the country, including those from disadvantaged communities. An estimated 380,000 young people benefit from this funding. Approximately 1,400 youth work staff work in 477 projects supported by the Government. What is also important is that 40,000 volunteers give their time and expertise to these very valuable projects. Funding of €51 million was provided in 2016 to my Department for these schemes. A sum of €2.6 million in capital funding was also provided in budget 2016 and is being used to support small-scale projects in local youth services such as refurbishment, health and safety fit-outs and accessibility improvements.

A sum of €500,405 has been allocated in 2016 for the projects and services under Kildare youth services which operates under Youth Work Ireland. This was an increase of more than €12,000 on the previous year’s allocation. My Department provides funding to Kildare youth services under the special projects for youth scheme for six local youth projects in Athy, Naas, Leixlip, Newbridge, the Curragh and Kildare town and for a youth information centre in Naas.

I was delighted to visit and launch the Hive youth hub in Kildare town last June, to which Deputy Heydon referred. As he knows, €50,000 in capital funding was provided towards the cost of developing this youth café facility which offers a safe environment for young people. My Department supports youth work activities at a local level through the local youth club grant scheme. Under this scheme grants are made available to all youth clubs and groups through local education and training boards, ETBs. More than 100 clubs in Kildare and Wicklow received grants under the 2016 scheme. A sum of €93,294 has been allocated to KWETB for this purpose in 2016.

As Deputy Heydon outlined, I recently met representatives of Kildare local community development and the children and young people’s services committee for Kildare to discuss their proposals. Officials from my Department also met representatives of Kildare youth services and have visited Kildare to hear about their work and their proposals for providing services in County Kildare.

At local level, youth officers of the ETBs have an important support role, on behalf of my Department, to local youth services. They work closely together to address issues that arise for local services. The Deputy will be aware that a number of funding schemes supporting youth services were the subject of a value for money and policy review in 2014. That review involved an in-depth scrutiny of the impact youth service provision has on the lives of young people.

Work on the development of a new funding scheme has been prioritised by my Department. Consultations with youth services continue with a view to introducing the new youth funding programme in line with the review over the coming years. There is one youth officer in post covering Wicklow and Kildare ETB. The officer is active in both counties. My Department has started a mapping exercise with all ETBs as part of a value for money exercise. The results of that exercise are due before Christmas, and officials will analyse the results early in 2017. If there is evidence to support the provision of funding for a second youth officer post, this will be considered.

As the Deputy is aware, budget 2017 has provided an additional €5.5 million in current funding to my Department to support the provision of youth services. That funding will be used for programmes that target disadvantaged young people and to assist national youth organisations in their work. In conjunction with national organisations and local services we are identifying local service development needs for 2017 and will complete that process as soon as possible.

See this speech in context