Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is welcome. I thank him for coming. I received apologies from the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman.

I first encountered youth work early in my working life when I observed the youth work programme. I had the honour of working with the YMCA in the city of Dublin. I saw the extraordinary impact it had on young people's lives, not only from the point of view of activities but also due to the opportunities presented to them. The sheer fact of the relationship with young people was extraordinarily lifesaving and life-changing. For the many young people who do not have mentors in their life, the youth worker is the person to whom they turn if there is the slightest crisis.

In September this year the National Youth Council made a fantastic presentation of its needs in the context of budget 2025 when it asked for €15 million in additional resources. In the same week, I participated in a panel with the Children's Rights Alliance and talked about my passion for what I have seen in youth work, as I have done throughout my career.

The Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth published a report, a central point of which is that youth work is the Cinderella of all the services. It involves highly qualified, professional and motivated people who really want to work with young people in a life-changing way, but they are not supported. The allocations to youth work do not cover the costs involved.

It is important that we honour youth workers, but it is not a sustainable career for people. The moment they arrive at a stage in their lives when they want to settle down or have a family and home of their own, they are not able to stay in youth work because of the pay rates. There are no pensions, and even auto-enrolment has not been properly funded. The cost of running services and facilities is not properly catered for in the budget that has been allocated in recent years. An announcement was made that we are going to have an increased provision of UBU services. Another ten of them are to be launched. We have had that announcement, yet when it comes to it, the rising costs in youth work, which are the same as in any other service or business across the country, are not met by the budget allocation.

Some €1.2 billion was allocated for the ten individual Your Place Your Space services. That is €120,000 each, which would cover 1.5 youth workers and some overheads at the most, and even that is a very modest wage.

I work with the St. John Bosco youth service in Drimnagh, which is extraordinary. It uses everything within its capacity to fund the services for the community of Drimnagh. The centre let out a space to a local guy, who has done extremely well and organised a gym so that there was some income, and Dublin City Council cut its funding because it has a commercial input. We have no sustainable plan for young people who really need it. I have had those young people in here. There is a similar family base in Ballyfermot that does fantastic work. They ask where the money is for youth work.

The word "youth" is thrown in at the very end of the Department's title, and that is how it is treated in the budget allocations. The National Youth Council of Ireland has been fantastic in advocating in this area but it is highly critical of what the Minister has delivered in budget 2025.