Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Áine Brady. I am speaking about youth cafés and the way the service is delivered in Galway, in particular, but also right across the country. There are nearly ten youth cafés in Galway and they provide a very useful service in this recessionary time. Never has there been more of a need to provide drop-in facilities for young people such as youth cafés. They are drop-in facilities, not just youth clubs.

Youth cafés have been tremendously popular. They work very well in this and other countries. They are extremely important in Galway in particular. The key point I want to raise with the Minister of State is that youth cafés are put together on a shoestring, very much on an ad hoc basis and there is an urgent need to regularise the manner in which they are dealt with and protected. One of the key difficulties is the various funding methodologies. The latest report features the youth party toolkit as set out by the Department of Health and Children. It shows that up to €10,000 would be provided for existing youth cafés and €50,000 to €100,000 for new youth cafés up to September 2012.

The difficulty lies with the fact that most of the money being spent - currently and in future - goes largely on providing facilities. There are still very high rents in this country and many of the existing youth cafés are in high-rent buildings. Given the present recessionary period, obviously much more property is being made available. The key message for the Minister of State, therefore, is to ensure the facility is prioritised as opposed to the building. I do not want to see any spread of the situation pertaining in one or two youth cafés, where a reasonably expensive building is only open for one or two hours a week, because there is no one to staff it or there are no proper back-up facilities in terms of youth organisations being able to provide them. There has to be a slightly new focus, therefore, in relation to youth cafés, ensuring that buildings are open for the maximum length of time and properly manned. This is where the investment needs to be targeted.

There is a case for potentially rationalising existing services, and I know talks are going on between different youth and community bodies in Galway, with a view to providing a facility that might work for a number of different organisations. Imaginative methodologies must be applied to try to ensure the different Departments which are supplying funding for the youth cafés, and the efforts of local authorities, communities etc., are very much tied together. We need to involve organisations such as Youth Work Ireland and Foróige heavily in terms of every youth café. I do not believe there is a case for closing youth cafés in recessionary times because they are needed more than ever to ensure proper facilities are provided for young people. Many other facilities, unfortunately, are closing.

I want to stress the importance of these facilities for younger people. We must adopt an all-party approach. There is major support among all political parties for the provision of these facilities. We need to think outside the box in these financially difficult times to provide the best possible people-focused service.