Investment in Youth Work: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this motion forward and I really appreciate the cross-party support around it. Comhairle youth work is very much the cornerstone of equality for young people. It is about social justice and meaningful participation. When so many children are excluded from accessing spaces, youth work is an entryway to civic engagement, being "real adults" and that level of growth they can undergo. The sector is supporting thousands of young people every year. Where I am based, in Carlow and Kilkenny, we have Ossory Youth, the Drum Youth Centre and Carlow Regional Youth Services. They are all incredible organisations doing such cool work and such important work in providing supportive spaces for young people but also challenging young people by challenging all of the harmful norms we are seeing a lot of young people being exposed to in the online space. Youth workers play such a key role in providing that mentorship, particularly when young people often feel quite isolated. We have all been teenagers. They can feel quite isolated from their families and their parents. Youth work provides that space where they can engage with an adult in a partnership of equals. Staff are highly skilled and highly trained but often experience burnout. The level of professionalism a lot of the staff in the youth work space have is not reflected in their contracts. It is not reflected by society. It is considered the voluntary sector or voluntary space when in fact these are people with master's degrees and PhDs, who have gone through many levels of education and provide such a vital service. Youth work has had a funding cut in real terms leading to an 8.1% shortfall it is experiencing. That cannot be bridged in only incremental increases. We need to see funding to allow the sector to grow, to expand and to deliver for future young people. We have of course already heard about the importance of multi-annual funding. It is so important for every civil society NGO. Annual funding is an absolute nightmare no matter what the space because it does not allow you to plan and be forward thinking. We have already heard in this debate that the National Youth Council of Ireland needs an investment of €27.3 million to sustain and develop the work it is doing. Senator Flynn used the phrase, which is quite beautiful, that youth work saves lives. She spoke so eloquently about what it was like to be a young woman from the Traveller community who has faced so much systemic exclusion from society. Hearing from her about the key role of youth work shows it is so crucial. I grew up in Belfast and I was involved in lots of cross-community projects delivered by youth workers. While we are very far from the early nineties and 2000s today, we are seeing so much division in our communities. Social cohesion is being undermined. The horrors of the digital space and the online world is leading to a lot of trouble for young people. However, more than that, the traditional structures of our communities seem frayed in many ways and youth work offers space to bring children and young people back into the space to ensure they are not further isolated from mainstream society. Young people are under such stress. All of us have young people in our lives. When I look back at being at that stage, I feel that young people today are burdened with so many worries they should not have on them. Youth work and youth spaces offer a really safe environment for them to articulate that and overcome those things in safe spaces. If we want to challenge the new norms we are seeing for young people and if we want to give them opportunities to thrive, to explore, to be challenged, to make real-world connections outside of their mobile phones and social media and real-world relationships, we have to invest in that space. The austerity years saw youth work take an absolute hammering and it was treated solely as an afterthought, to contribute to if we had a little extra, and as voluntary. It ignored how important it was for so many young people. I thank Senator Flynn for her contribution. I think she is no longer in the Chamber. It was really important to remind us about all the people who live on the margins of society and are excluded and how youth work is a hand-up to them to bring them forward and to support them and bring them up. She spoke about equality of opportunity and that is what youth work offers so many young people in Ireland. --- 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