Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House to discuss this issue which I have discussed with her privately on several occasions. She understands my passion about improving youth services in County Kildare and the demographic challenges we face.

I thank the Minister for engaging with representatives of Kildare youth services in recent months. She met them in mid-November and also back in June when she was in Kildare town to open the Hive youth hub, a great facility for young people in the town. I hope these meetings and engagements, as well as the discussions I have had with the Minister, have helped to highlight for her the scale of the challenges facing Kildare in providing youth services and helped her to understand the unique position of my county.

Kildare has a growing population as well as an above average youth population. This is coupled with a low level of service provision across the spectrum from essential universal services to specialised services. The Minister witnessed the strong, positive and established inter-agency relationships that exist in the county's children and young peoples' services committee and the local community development committee. This allows us to maximise the impact of available resources and produce tangible results such as the Hive, which the Minister visited.

The group presented a proposal to the Minister setting out the resources required to begin to increase service levels for children, young people and families in Kildare. I wish to focus specifically on three areas: the need for a dedicated youth officer for Kildare, the need to increase the number of family resource centres, and the proposal to buy the Hive building. Kildare shares a youth officer with County Wicklow. The post is funded through the Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board, KWETB. Kildare's population is one of the fastest growing in the State. According to the 2016 census, the population increased by 5.6% compared with the national average of 3.7%. According to the 2011 census, 28.3% of the population in Kildare is aged 17 and under compared with the national average of 25%. I expect that trend to continue and to be reflected in the 2016 census results. Kildare is too big a county, with an above average youth population, not to have its own dedicated youth officer. Will the Minister outline the engagement to date between her Department and KWETB to address impediments to filling such a crucial post?

There are only two family resource centres in the whole county catering for more than 220,000 people. Counties with much lower populations have considerably more family resource centres. Kerry has 12, Donegal has nine and Mayo has seven, but the population in each of those counties is far smaller than that of Kildare. I know from engaging with our family resource centres the value of the work they do. We need more of them in our county.

There is a proposal to buy the Hive building in Kildare town from An Post. This is a cost-effective proposal which would greatly add to youth facilities, not just in the town but in the county as a whole. The Hive provides a youth café and meeting space, services which were not previously available. The plan was to pilot a youth hub for the entire county, and such a venture could operate out of the current space. We need to secure the building to secure and maintain the current provision of services and facilities and to expand them. The inter-agency approach is established in Kildare and a lot more can be done. The purchase of the building is a one-off cost the Department should consider in its budget for 2017.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | 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.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her detailed response, her overall interest in the issue and, in particular, its impact in south Kildare.

As a county, Kildare is not fully understood. Its scale, the number of people who live in it, including the number of children and young people, the growth rate and the level of need our county is experiencing is sometimes underestimated. County Kildare faces particular challenges. Historically, we have very low levels of those services across the spectrums I mentioned earlier. Traditional definitions and interpretations of deprivation and the manner in which those apply in resource allocation do not appropriately reflect and respond to the complex needs of our county. In addition, our county's geography poses a challenge for service provision due to the urban and rural mix and its sheer scale.

However, the biggest challenge we have faced in Kildare is the perception of affluence that does not mirror reality in every corner of the county. I ask that the Department would take that on board and help us to expand our family resource provision, purchase the Hive building and get our dedicated youth officer.

On the specific area of youth services, the Minister and the Department must recognise and understand the demographics of our very young population and our historically low service levels and realise that in playing catch-up, we need to do more than just provide for a small increase, as the rest of the county gets a small increase, because the recession hit us hardest due to our levels being low before the recession. When the cuts came, they cut to the bone in Kildare South and there are statistics that point to that.

I look forward to the review in 2017 and to working with the Minister further with a view to getting improved resources into youth services provision in Kildare, south Kildare in particular.

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Heydon. As he rightly identified, the perceptions of County Kildare may be different from the reality. That was certainly made aware to me by the representatives of his county who met with me here and also in the county. I am particularly grateful for that awareness having been raised.

The two key points the Deputy made concern the numbers of young people in the county but also the mixed socioeconomic backgrounds throughout the county as distinct from the more affluent perception of the county. If the mapping exercise I referred to in my initial remarks demonstrates evidence of need both with regard to the numbers of young people and perhaps that mixed socioeconomic demographic, we will have something to work with, specifically in terms of the Deputy's request for funding of a youth officer for the county. My Department has gone back to the people we spoke with and we are very open to continuing that discussion, particularly with regard to that post. I look forward to continuing that conversation.

That mapping exercise helps us to understand better the requirements for an additional family resource centre as well as capital funding. The Deputy's proposals that came to me indicated a number of other aspects to that which, in my conversations with his people, we went through in a detailed manner. I made some suggestions in terms of how to follow up all of those, but particularly the ones the Deputy identified here.