Youth Work Supports
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-21
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Conor D. McGuinness (SF), Waterford

I note the Minister's response and thank her for it. The difficulty is not the absence of strategy, it is the absence of delivery. We see the results of the workforce survey. There is also the workforce development strategy that is taking place at the moment. This is another case of too little too late. The issues in terms of recruitment and retention are not new. In many cases, they have always been thus. However, they have accelerated and worsened since the economic crash in 2008 and 2009 and the years of austerity that followed. Youth services have never fully recovered from all the cuts that were imposed by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael-led Governments since then. What we need to see now is parity between the remuneration offered to youth workers working in the community in voluntary organisations and that of employees doing similar work, and, in many cases, with similar qualifications and similar demands on their time, in the public sector. That is a method we can use to maybe keep people in jobs where they are at the coalface and are doing front-line work that is so valuable in all our communities.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-21