Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. I commend my colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, and the Fine Gael group on bringing forward this motion.

I have worked for many years as a volunteer with many youth groups and have also been involved in a secondary school. Only recently I attended a Zoom meeting with some students to speak about their experience during Covid. While some of them had the experience of being able to go to school, I also met with some third level students who certainly felt that the biggest loss was not being able to meet their friends and colleagues. Not being able to meet first hand has certainly put an awful lot of pressure on young people.

There was a call earlier that a committee be set up and that the youth be engaged with it. It is the way to go because the youth have so much of a contribution to make. They have so many of their own thoughts and it is all about our futures as well. Many of them have thought it out.Covid has taught many of us, including our youth, what needs to happen. It has given us time to reflect as well. I learned that from the two different groups I met.

In my community, a number of the voluntary groups that were previously run by older people were taken over by young people when Covid hit and the older people were afraid to go outside and get involved in the community. Young people got involved in the delivery of the meals-on-wheels service and a number of other services when people who would otherwise be involved in organising some of these services were not vaccinated and felt unable to contribute. Our youth went out of their way to get involved. They have made an enormous contribution during the Covid pandemic.

Many young people were mentioned by Senator Malcolm Byrne, including the Collison brothers from Limerick. We all know of their success arising out of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. There is a lot of investment in youth services, but we need to make further investment in programmes like that and to encourage youth to get involved. Young people also get involved in the Gaisce programme. We need to develop that further at a later stage as well. So many young people have contributed at bronze, silver and gold levels of the programme, but it is only open to those between the ages of 15 and 25. We need to expand programmes like that.

Many schools offer youth political programmes, but this is not compulsory. We need to encourage students to get involved in such programmes. I was involved in youth politics at a young age. It gave me a great understanding of my views and led to me getting involved in voluntary work in my community. That was my route into politics. It is important that we engage with young people. They have missed out over the last 12 months. They have so much to contribute. We should definitely engage with the student unions, but we should also put out a call to young people to come forward and participate in youth forums, such as Comhairle na nÓg, through which they can bring forth their own policies. So many young leaders have come out of that forum. An open engagement with organisations like that might be useful in developing youth policies going forward.