Investment in Youth Work: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. It is great to have her here. I really welcome this debate and I am really thankful to the Sinn Féin Senators for bringing this forward. I am a professional youth worker. I qualified as a youth worker in 2001. We were the second set of graduates from the course in UCC. The Youth Work Act 2001 was out at that stage. We have come a long way and it is great that the youth services are back within the Department of education again. I have to say before I start that unfortunately, there is still no standard youth work pay scale. There are different titles within youth work. When I started working as a youth worker, I worked in Belfast, Dublin, Donegal, Sligo and all over the country as a youth worker with different organisations such as Foróige, ETB and Home Youth Liaison Service, HYLS. We still do not have a straightforward pay scale. Some of the issues we are talking about tonight come from that. As a trade unionist, it is very hard to unionise people to come together to look for pay agreements or look for increases in salaries because we do not have one clear, full pay scale and people who work as youth workers can be funded through the Department of justice and the Department of children, besides the Minister's own Department. I know she has made great strides and there has been an increase in the youth work budget, but is it 0.2% of the full education budget goes to youth services? The Minister might clarify that when we come back. Having said that, we have come a long way. I remember when I qualified as a youth worker, my parents said to me they had no idea what it was because it was such a new profession. It is great we are getting that recognition. From listening to everyone here speaking, because of the lack of multi-annual funding, it is very hard to retain staff in youth services. It is hard to plan and I think everyone would agree, and it is probably one of the main asks from this, that youth organisations should get multi-annual funding, not only so they are able to recruit staff but also so they are able to retain staff. If there was a proper pay scale, then incremental pay scales could come in. I know at one stage, Foróige paid more than Youth Work Ireland. I worked with the Home Youth Liaison Service so there is a lot of differential between pay scales. One regular pay scale would alleviate an awful lot of that. On capital projects, at the moment, youth services are coming from a very low base. I know investment has increased but there are so many buildings around the country that need a huge amount of upgrading. That is where some of the additional capital funding is wanted. That should come from across the Departments. Youth work is not just a single identity. The nature of youth work and the expression "mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí" is the premise for youth work. Regarding investment in youth work, early years and right down, I know some of the organisations I worked in, such as the Home Youth Liaison Service, or if it was a targeted youth service, you were able to work with young people as young as eight where it is different for others. There is a bit of difference around what services are provided within the youth work space and within social care, such as the age of certain young people you are able to work with. It is about the investment in existing capital projects but also looking at youth spaces for all. I also went over to Youth Work Ireland today and it is moving away from certain things. Of course, there is a need for targeted youth work and there will always be, like the UBU projects and like the justice projects. There will always be a need for targeted youth work, where it is referral based and there are specific moneys going into that but there is also a real need for youth spaces for all and youth work for all. Any young person should have access to a youth space and it can be there that young people can be identified if they have additional needs if there are professional youth workers there, who are qualified and trained, to recognise this family needs a bit of extra support and this young person needs extra support. They know the channels to go through, such as Tusla, Meitheal or child protection and they are able to access those organisations because they work on the ground and they know. That is the role of a youth worker. Many of my friends are youth workers and they still work in the youth work space. They say there are so many complex needs for young people that are developing. Young people are concerned about housing, they are concerned about addiction and they are concerned about social media. The needs of young people have increased but there is also the appreciation, as I would call it, not just monetary appreciation but the need to have proper funding, contracts and pensions to make sure that youth workers are not completely stressed out and they are not completely overloaded with their work. That is often the case when you are working on the front line like that. There are not enough resources there to ensure staff will stay. More and more, we will rely on youth workers, particularly in the age of social media. There needs to be more youth workers employed specifically to look at critically educating people or getting people critically engaged in thought but also around social media. With youth spaces for all, the nature of working in a youth centre and the nature of youth work is that you are open, it is inclusive, it is non-judgemental and young people feel safe to ask questions or to make sure they are allowed to be themselves in a space where they are at themselves. That is another area we will have to continue to look at. It is great that other Senators have said that, within the education committee, youth work gets better emphasis. I am on the children's committee and that is now being removed from it. It is really important that it does get it within those committees. --- 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