Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his contribution. The increase in funding for youth work is very welcome. The role I had immediately after youth work was working in the school completion programme. While there have been increases in funding for both of those sectors, during the austerity era youth work and the school completion programme were cut so dramatically and so drastically that they have not recovered to pre-austerity levels. While there have been increases in funding, they are not back to the original levels nor are they keeping in line with inflation. That is putting huge pressure on youth services to appropriately fund the services they provide.

Looking at my area, Dublin 8, the centre burned down and the projects could no longer be housed there. There is a lack of space in Dublin 8 for youth services to be housed. That means young people are hanging around and not able to do anything. They want to do things. Just because young people are hanging out, it does not mean they are involved in antisocial behaviour. However, youth workers want to engage them. We have that possibility to do that. There is fantastic work going on in all the youth services in Dublin 8 and I commend them on their work. More young people are coming into youth work.

I welcome the survey the Minister of State mentioned, which will go out next week. That will shed a clear light on how many youth workers there are, the level of qualifications they have, where the needs are and on being able to fill that gap.

I would like to see a committee for young people in this Dáil term. Every decision made here is going to affect the people who are young now in the future. If we could future-proof and young people-proof every decision we made, we would be very copped on. It is great to work with young people. They keep you real and they always talk straight, and I appreciate that. I thank the Minister of State.

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