Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. He has a genuine interest in making life a better place for our youth. We should all subscribe to that type of thinking.

I thank Senator Seery Kearney for bringing forth this important motion. In terms of Covid, young people have lost out on school and college time, participation in sports, part-time jobs, their social lives and their relationships. The rug was plugged from under them, but we need to acknowledge some of the work they have done. For example, those who had grandparents living in their areas have called to their homes to see if there was anything they could do for them, always mindful to be socially distanced. They went to the local shops to buy fuel and so on. In some parts of the country, young people got involved in social services. We should acknowledge that they were there to help during the crisis. They were also of enormous help to families with children with disabilities. Young people who have brothers, sisters or cousins with disabilities, for whom services were not available owing to Covid, were, I am told, on hand to help. That should be acknowledged.We need to look at the paused apprenticeship programme. A lot of young people have had their apprenticeships paused and they have been told they will not be able to get back to them for six or seven months. I would like the Minister to bring that back to the Cabinet to see if we could get them back more quickly as long as more people are vaccinated and society starts to return to normality.

We also need to look at the operation of SUSI. Due to the PUP, there are families that will have difficulty qualifying for any grant. In normal circumstances they would qualify and those are people who do not have an awful lot of money. They are not in any way even middle-income families. We need to look at that to see if we can help them because the PUP has put them over the threshold. Maybe we need to step in there and try to do what we can for them.

As we go forward we have to engage with youth, listen to them more and give them more of a say. Prior to the arrangement of the leaving certificate, what the second level students got involved with in such a mature way was outstanding. It shows what can be done with people working together and listening. Some years back the second level students might not have been listened to and it might have been questioned whether they should have a say. Their contribution and the fact that the Government and all politicians listened to them and saw they had a good case to make on the leaving certificate was extremely important. In the end, we saw that when they were given a choice, some 98% of students were happy with that. They were listened to and the right thing was done. It shows that a level of co-operation and discussion is important. Rather than talk down to them and ask what they would know about it, we should bring them on board, talk to them, discuss issues and listen to them.