Investment in Youth Work: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-15 ============================================================ Pauline Tully (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel I thank all of the Senators who contributed to the debate. It was a very positive debate and we all agree on practically all of the points and the importance of youth work, as does the Minister. I commend all of the organisations involved in youth work, whether providing a club, service or project, and I commend all the staff, paid and unpaid. Voluntary workers do so much good work. I also commend the young people who participate. The Minister mentioned Oíche na hÓige, which was very successful when it was run a few months ago. It created awareness of youth clubs and encouraged participation. Youth clubs have said they cannot deal with the increased numbers. They are genuinely under pressure. I did not bring forward this motion because they are not and because they are getting sufficient funding. They are under pressure to meet existing levels of service. There is a need for increase. We talked about staff, and there are excellent youth workers who are working with young people but it is very difficult to recruit and retain because of the cost-of-living pressures on these workers. They are going to go into other sectors that pay better because they cannot meet their rent or the cost-of-living pressures. Many youth workers say they are under pressure because they are filling gaps left by other agencies in society. They are providing mental health supports and counselling services and they are not necessarily qualified in these areas. This brings more pressure. It is an issue for other Departments but it highlights the need for all Departments across the board to be working together in supporting our young people and supporting the workers who are working with them. Senator McCarthy brought up quite a disturbing story about the young seven-year-old boy he spoke about. It makes us cold thinking about what some children are going through. We wonder why certain services are not picking up on this and interventions are not made. I have long argued that we should invest money in communities where there is deprivation, intergenerational poverty and trauma. Money invested there would be money well spent because we would save it at the other end when we would not have to incarcerate them, which costs an awful lot more money. I spoke to a youth worker who works with the youth diversion programme, who said that sometimes by the time a child is referred to them and they start to work with that child they realise they also have to work with their parents and other members of the family because there are often years of trauma, including perhaps domestic violence or addiction issues. We need to start investing and youth work is vital in our societies for working with young people. We need to start investing in families and putting in supports. Our resource centres do terrific work but they are underresourced also. We need to resource all of our community supports. When there was a recession, an awful lot of this funding was cut. It is vital funding needs to be maintained, if not increased, when a recession hits and there is unemployment. It is the families who are most deprived that suffer more and the supports that were in the community go also. They really hit rock bottom. I urge the Minister to please try to invest more in our youth services. The National Youth Council represents many organisations. It has engaged with the implementation plan and the review of the implementation plan. It has the figures done and it has a pre-budget submission ready. It has laid out that the organisations are under pressure and need more funding. It is vital work and we need to support it. --- 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