Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a topic that really interests me so I have been listening to the debate. I sometimes I think I live in a parallel universe. I have listened to successive speakers on the Government side talking about things I absolutely agree with. I agree with everything people have mentioned, such as investment in youth services, prevention and making sure we do not get to the stage where we need to talk about diverting young people from criminal activity. It reminds me of when I worked in this field - for more than 20 years - and every one of the services they talked about from 2011 onwards were decimated. Some 20%, 30%, 40% and 50% of funding was cut. One project had 100% of its funding was cut. That is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to recession. The communities that most need it are the ones that are most devastated by cuts. Then we look at the situation and ask why and how we ended up here. The reason is that there was no investment in the areas to which other speakers have referred.

Things were working and were extremely successful. I worked in school completion. It is an amazing programme that works really well. Our project in Coolock suffered a 37% cut. Who can sustain that? Yet, we were asked to do the same thing every year and to try to provide support, which we did to the best of our ability.

With regard to what we are talking about today in the context of tariffs, economic shocks and certain things that are happening, I urge the Government not to do what was done the last time and not to cut services. I urge it to invest. Diverting young people is about investing in communities, sports, youth clubs and organisations that work directly with young people. It is about making sure that they have dedicated facilities. I will give an example. Dublin 15 has a population of more than 130,000 people. The most diverse and youngest population in the State does not have one dedicated youth facility. They are operating out of buildings, commercial premises, community centres and so on, but there is not one dedicated youth facility. I have worked in dedicated youth facilities that work. Sphere 17 in Darndale is a brilliant dedicated youth facility. Diverting young people is about investment and, as I said, it is about making sure that we not only divert young people from getting involved in criminal activity, we just do not allow it to happen. We cannot do it for everyone, but we can do our best try to prevent everyone else.

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