Investment in Youth Work: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Eileen Flynn (IND), Administrative Panel I also welcome the guests from Ballymun this evening to the Visitors Gallery. We are the only country in Europe that has a Youth Work Act. We value youth work as a society. We know the important role youth services and youth workers play in any young person's life. Youth work is not a luxury. As I got up to deliver this speech, I thought about Bernadette Devlin's quote about how we live in an unjust world; we are not meant to grow up in one. It is really unfortunate that many of the young people in this country are growing up in an unjust world. If you are from the Traveller community, if you are a young person who is LGBTQI+, if you are a young person who is black or brown, if you are a young person with a disability or you are just a young person who is different, you need those supports. I came up through a youth service in Ballyfermot, the Ballyfermot Youth Service, BYS, and it genuinely changed my life. I was involved in a youth forum in The Base youth centre in Ballyfermot. I saw there was more to life than the halting site I was born and reared in. It gave me equality of opportunities to go beyond Ireland, to go to other countries, and to have that opportunity to not just be the young person from the halting site but to be the young person who was involved in her community through youth work. Youth work is a different form of education. I know this as a qualified youth worker. I went back to university as a mature student at Maynooth University to study youth work and community development work. I put my hand up. Anyone who knows me well will say that my first mindset was thinking, "I do not want to be a youth worker. All they do all day is drink tea and play pool." That is not the case. The drinking tea and playing pool is the engagement with young people. Non-formal education is absolutely critical. The youth workers at The Base knew I was not 18; I was only 17. I managed to get onto the board of management - you had to be 18 for that. I remember being a Traveller and feeling so lost within my identity. It was nothing to do with my community but was about how Travellers were treated. I remember being a young person representing all young people of Ballyfermot. What a privilege. I know for a fact that youth workers save lives. They saved my life numerous times. I could have gone down any wrong road but I had somewhere to go. It was that cup of tea and the slice of toast. It was being told, "You are a great worker. The young people listen to you and you can be a youth leader". They empower our young people to go on to university. A young woman is doing a placement with me right now. I spoke about her yesterday. She is not ashamed to say that she is in care. Again, she is in a Youthreach and is heavily involved in her youth service in her local area. That is saving her life. There are so many young people whose lives have genuinely been saved by youth workers. I went up to Foróige in Tallaght last month and met with a group. There was a young Traveller woman in the group. She was so intelligent. They had a youth council meeting and never before have I ever seen Traveller children being involved at a local level. They are either involved through Exchange House or other Traveller organisations. A lot of the time we segregate Travellers into just Traveller organisations. It was lovely to see this young woman being involved at her local level, just like I was when I was 17 and involved at local level. For many a young person who attends the local youth service, it is a different kind of education. It gives them a world of opportunities. We know that youth work suffered deep from the cuts after the financial crash with Government funding reduced by 31%. Many services in working class areas have still not recovered. The National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, and others have called for an increase in youth work funding. It should be prioritised. We have an Act. We are brilliant at European level when it comes to youth work. We do the exchanges. We are very active at European level but we need to put our money where our mouth is. We really need to invest in youth work and we need to see youth workers as professionals in their roles, which they are. They are professionals in a different form of education and it must be funded. I support 100% the Sinn Féin motion today, along with my Civil Engagement colleagues. As Bernadette Devlin said, "We were born into an unjust system: we are not prepared to grow old in it". There are thousands of children today in this country being saved by youth workers. We need to invest in this critical youth work. It is not a luxury. It is a basic right, just like education. I support the motion, along with the Civil Engagement group. --- 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