Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. I thank our Fine Gael colleagues, and Senator Seery Kearney in particular, for bringing this very considerate and important Private Members' motion to the House. I very much welcome this debate today which addresses how young people have suffered as a result of Covid-19 in the context of social isolation, education, employment and housing. In truth, any cohort in our society which relies on others for the fulfilment of their life has been badly affected. This includes our older people, young people, carers, people with disabilities and those with a health condition that makes them vulnerable. These are the people, our family members and members of our community, who have been affected most by Covid-19. One of the lessons we must learn from this pandemic is how to ensure that those who are most vulnerable are not disproportionately affected should another pandemic occur, which we hope will not happen.

Today's debate is about children and young people and it is up to us in this House to find answers. How do we create a world that they deserve? They deserve everything but they have not got everything during this pandemic. We see the same pre-pandemic problems arising again; they are starting to creep back into the news. We hear about homeless children, people with disabilities not getting access to care and young people engaging in anti-social behaviour. The latter is a symptom of the problem of disengagement and it is up to all of us to address it. I welcome Senator Boyhan's contribution and agree that it is about all of us working together.It might be a bit twee to say it, but children are our future. If we do not look after them now, then who will take over from us? We are all shaped and affected by our life experiences. It is up to us as adults, parents, aunts, uncles, and as legislators, to do our best in advocating for our children, to make them strong and confident and resilient, to ensure that every child has a dream, and that they can do what they want with that dream. I have been incredibly lucky to live in a country that has allowed me to dream, to know there was a big world out there beyond the Cooley Mountains, and to know that if I wanted to do something I could get there. The State helped me to achieve it. It gave me a good education and I scraped myself into university. I got the grant. I was able to move on. I got supported in college. Only for it, I would not be here today. The State created an environment for me and I am so grateful for that. I am one of the lucky ones, however. There are many people in our country, especially children and younger people, who do not see that this opportunity is there for them. It is for us now to make visible those opportunities for young people and children.

We have all been affected by the pandemic, including our children. Parents have been working from home and home-schooling children. It was an incredible struggle. Families really suffered. Consider the parent or two parents working who had a couple of children. It nearly broke us. It was very hard. Our family had to row back from our home schooling because everything was given and we felt as a family that we were achieving nothing. All we could do was to step back from the home schooling and give love and time. There may have been less reading and writing done, but there was a little bit more sitting and cuddling done. That helped us but not every family was able to do that.

We must applaud those families for how they struggled through and achieved. Some families, however, did not. It is up to us now to look at how we can support families to get through the next period. There are an awful lot of families who have been locked down in abuse. It is no offence to fathers, but it is usually the single mothers who need the support. I am aware that a lot of this debate is cross-departmental. We hope the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, will report back to his Cabinet colleagues. A lot of supports are needed, from mental health supports to creating an environment where a mother can get herself educated. It can break that cycle. When children see their mother achieving in education and moving forward, that she has the confidence in herself, this confidence is passed on to her children. I see so often how this is the link and the cycle to break: to make sure we look after the mother and the father, to give them the opportunities, and the opportunities will then be given to the families.

There are so many activities for young people but a lot of those activities cost a lot of money. Similar to the back-to-school initiative, there should be a grant to allow lower wage families to be able to afford the GAA, gymnastics, ballet and all of those things, which can cost a lot of money. This is how to get children engaged in their communities and to get them involved and part of it. It really opens up a door.

We should also have a national paid internship programme that looks after all of our children. We could pull them in from across all parts of society, from those young people with a disability to the LGBTQ young people, and positively discriminate to get young people working in our State organisations.

A huge number of children are waiting on the basic child developmental checks. We need to look after the mental health supports. We need to look after those disaffected youth. Anti-social behaviour is just a symptom of the problem, the youth are not the problem.