Investment in Youth Work: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel I thank the Minister for coming to the House. As has been said, it is important that we invest in young people and our communities. One of the issues that comes up when talking to youth workers around the inner city of Dublin is the impact of housing prices and accommodation. As Senator Tully mentioned, recruitment and retention are issues. If a youth worker is living close to the city centre or around the city centre, it is not a problem. Youth workers would like to invest and work in their local communities. It is about ensuring that more people are going through college. There is a community development and youth work course in Maynooth University. We want people working through that course. We want to produce more students from the inner city. I am not sure if the Minster has visited the Talk about Youth club at St. Andrew's Resource Centre. It is a brilliant youth club. There is also the South Area Youth Service, SAYS, club off Mercer Street. Neither of them has its own space. They have to rent space. They do not have the resources to work with the kids. The spaces they can rent often are not big enough. That has a huge impact on the kids, who require certainty to engage in the youth work. I know that Ms Eileen Nalty in Talk about Youth and Mr. Brendan Dowling in SAYS, as well as Robbie, Louisa, Carmel and Lisa, do incredible work with the young people in an area that is being left behind. It is a very difficult area to work in. We saw the riots that happened down there. We have seen a lot of antisocial behaviour. Many kids are hard to reach and hard to work with, and they do not have the resources. As I said, they do not have the spaces. There should be more funding for outreach to ensure that those kids who are harder to react to or engage with are engaged. That is not happening. I know that on the north side, there are quite a number of youth clubs. Because of the Mulvey report and the north-east inner city, NEIC, initiative, funding has gone in there, as the Minister will know, to ensure there is funding for youth clubs. The same cannot be said about the south side. They are effectively one community. I know the river divides them, but the north and south inner city are effectively one community. There are lots of family connections and interactions. They have the same issues. Both areas have been left behind by the State. Investment has not gone into the south inner city. As I said, Talk about Youth does amazing work and is really committed. It has nowhere from which to work. Those involved never know if they will be able to find somewhere to rent and there is no certainty around it. The organisation finds it difficult to recruit and retain staff. Housing is so expensive in the inner city, particularly on this side of the inner city. People are competing with others whose wages come from Google and the other high-tech companies. That is who is renting all the new, modern premises. Youth workers, on youth worker salaries, are not going to be able to compete with those whose wages come from Google and the other high-tech companies. We need to get more people from the inner city though college and then they can work with the young people who are here. I have a family member who is involved in boxing. That is youth work, although it does not fall under that remit because it is a sport. The work that boxing clubs do is absolutely incredible. The volunteers that are there are absolutely incredible. It would be great to see some way that those clubs could get more funding. I know it is not directly related to the Minister's responsibility, but Nutgrove Boxing Club, the Dublin Docklands Boxing Club and Baldoyle Boxing Club do incredible work. Out in Baldoyle, Christy Dunne, Ronan and Graham do absolutely incredible work with young people. They are there during the day for all-Irelands or the Dublin leagues. They bring them to sparring sessions. They do absolutely incredible work and they do it for nothing. Those clubs should be better resourced. I think of the conditions some of those clubs are in. I do appreciate it is not the Minister’s responsibility but they do fantastic work with young people. That is an aside but I think it is important to acknowledge the role played by volunteers not only in boxing but in all sports clubs. When we are talking about youth and youth services, it is crucial to focus on the housing crisis, on payments and on the need to get students from the inner city through college so they can learn the skills that are required for youth work. --- 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/2026-04-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-15