National Volunteering Strategy: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-24 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel Good evening, a Aire Stáit. I would like to start by commending again all those who are involved in volunteering in so many sectors across Cavan and all of our country. You have people who work with children, with our youth, with our sports organisations and with drama groups. You have got community development organisations. You have got the Tidy Towns, older people and disabled people. I want to mention PPNs. PPNs do vital work in supporting the voluntary and community sector in all of our counties. They give them a voice, for example, on strategic policy committees, SPCs, so that they can influence policy and decision-making, but they also are involved in networking between organisations and providing training and advice. They are important and I commend them. Looking back on my own life, I have volunteered in many different capacities. Sometimes, you do it without even thinking. As was said, in your involvement in a political party, you are volunteering quite a bit of your time. I would have been involved as a Foróige leader in my time. I would have been involved in extracurricular activities at school. It would give you a different perspective of working with young people because you are not teaching them in the classroom; you are meeting them on a different level. It builds the relationship, and improves it, with them in school. I was also involved in a community development organisation in my local area and we built a community centre there. That was heavily influenced by the need for something. There is an organisation called Kilnaleck Social Services. It did important work with older people in the community and just needed a place where it could bring people for different activities on a regular basis, provide them with a hot meal and have little bits of entertainment and engagement. It is a wonderful organisation. It has been going for many years. I also want to mention Positive Age Cavan. It works with older people as well. It is all volunteer led and is important in providing support to older people. I want to mention volunteers from other countries. There has been a huge number of people who have come here, as asylum seekers or to work, from other countries and have got involved in the local community. It is wonderful to see. It is a great way of integrating people into communities. I engaged with the National Youth Council of Ireland this week and it has a few comments on the youth sector in relation to volunteers involved in youth work. Volunteer youth work is the cornerstone of the youth sector in Ireland. A majority of young people who engage in youth clubs do so with the volunteer-led youth clubs, but the council feels that there is insufficient training and support for volunteers and for the development, recruitment and retention of volunteers within the youth sector because they are essential to sustaining youth work infrastructure, particularly in rural and community-based settings. The launch of Ireland's first national volunteering strategy in December 2020 was a landmark step. It recognised and supported the unique contribution of volunteers. I am delighted to note that there is another one being prepared to follow during the year. The strategy introduced a comprehensive set of measures to ensure the sustainability and development of volunteering across Irish society, but without consistent investment in volunteer support and club development, the sector risks losing its reach, diversity and grassroots involvement. The council will continue to seek training provision - participation costs sometimes need to be covered - and formal recognition of the governance role within youth organisations and, indeed, other organisations as well. Some people have already mentioned here that we have to be careful that we do not overburden groups, especially smaller organisations that only have maybe a small number of volunteers, with a lot of regulations. Regulation is important. We have to ensure that there is good governance in all of these sectors. I recognise that there are different organisations established, such as the Charities Regulator, to ensure all of that is done properly but we have to ensure that there is investment, not only in training support staff, but in administrative roles, and that it does not become too cumbersome for smaller organisations. Volunteers may give their time freely but it is not cost free. For example, many organisations have had to recruit additional staff solely to manage vetting requirements. Going back to the youth work sector, the volunteer activation fund was a valuable initiative that recognised these pressures. It has not yet been confirmed for 2026. Maybe the Minister of State can confirm that the volunteer activation fund will continue because it creates certainty for organisations that rely heavily on volunteers. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:41+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-24