Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's Department funds youth work to the tune of €72.9 million nationally, as he said. I understand that. The National Youth Council of Ireland, the people who advocate policy for young people at national level, is calling for €9.4 million to be invested in the youth work sector. It is proposing that €7.3 million of this additional funding go to various current schemes already in place and €2.1 million to universal youth work, to bring this in line with increases elsewhere in the sector. I am sure the Minister is aware of that. The Finglas Youth Resource Centre would hopefully receive an adequate portion of that funding if the Minister would look at it. I know he has increased the funding over the last two years but going back to 2007, the funding the youth resource centre was getting was higher. It is not even near that at the moment. We need to bear that in mind. While the Minister has made progress and increased funding in the last two years, it is no way near what it was in 2007. We have had inflation, food poverty, utility costs and the cost of living. Everything has gone up.

In 2007, the youth resource centre had 14 full-time posts. It now has nine full-time posts with people fulfilling large roles. Some people are going way beyond what they should be doing. They are doubling up and doing things. It does not make sense. This resource centre is so important. If we did not have the volunteers and the people doing the extra work, I shudder to think how things would go because there is no doubt that it would have a huge effect. I am asking that the Minister look at this. I know he gave some money towards helping some projects but they are not always permanent and are not pencilled in. We need to pencil in more money for that youth resource centre and for people to run it and the full-time jobs that are required.

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