Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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Question 1162: To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if funding will be provided for a voluntary youth group (details supplied) in County Kerry; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18255/12]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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A total of €1.7m (approximately) in funding has been available from 2010 to date for the specific support of the provision of youth cafés. The bulk of this funding was allocated to the dedicated competitive funding scheme announced in 2010. The majority of the funds awarded from this scheme (approximately €1.5m) were distributed to the successful projects in 2011 and the facilities are gradually coming on stream. A further €200,000 was made available by my Department to various youth café projects in late 2011. This brings the total funding (to date) to circa €1.7m. The funding was designed to both provide completely new youth cafés and to support existing youth cafés who needed assistance in providing additional facilities etc.

My Department is committed to supporting the development of quality, front-line youth work projects and services which address the changing needs of young people and communities. A key element of this is to support the continued nationwide development of youth café facilities given the considerable benefits they offer for young people to meet in safe drug and alcohol free spaces and most importantly the identification of the need for such spaces by young people themselves. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs now estimates that between 75-100 youth café facilities now operate across the state and are seen as hugely beneficial to local communities in terms of broader engagement with young people. The projects are in many cases run directly by or in partnership with young people and are popular with teenagers and young people generally. We must ensure therefore that we focus any funding supports to support as many as possible of the existing locations as well as providing targeted funding for new locations. My Department is currently looking at what capital funding will be available in 2012. I must stress that this is capital funding and one of the criteria for the provision of funding will be that projects would be sustainable into the future as it is not expected that current funding will be available to provide ongoing support to these projects.