Front-line youth workers are being asked to carry more and more of the burden with less and less. They are dealing every day with the real pressures facing young people, such as mental health challenges, online harm and misinformation, social isolation and increasingly visible antisocial behaviour. In Waterford, we are seeing that play out in very real terms with the lighting of fires in parts of Waterford city, and most recently in the Gallowshill area of Dungarvan, along with the growing misuse of nitrous oxide, an issue that is being consistently flagged by my colleague, Councillor Kate O’Mahoney, and Deputy Mark Ward, who has moved legislation in this regard. These are symptoms of a deep failure by a Government that frankly no longer gives a crap. Youth work is one of the most effective tools we have to intervene early, build trust and empower and equip young people with the skills and confidence to navigate the world they are growing up in but it is being undermined by Government failure. Recruitment and retention is now a serious problem. Skilled, committed youth workers are leaving because pay and conditions do not reflect the value or demands of the role. That is not sustainable. Services are also struggling under chronic underfunding. Rising costs, increased demand and the uncertainty of funding streams are making long-term planning almost impossible. There is a clear deficit in infrastructure. Too many communities do not have proper youth spaces and that has been allowed to persist for years. Youth Work Ireland set this out clearly when I and many other Deputies met it last week. Proper funding, fair pay through a statutory scale and a capital programme for facilities are needed. The Minister will no doubt point to strategy in her response but strategy without delivery or funding does not support a single young person. We need investment, certainty and a recognition that youth work is not optional. In fact, for many of the communities that I and many other Deputies in this House represent, it is utterly essential.

Sentiment score: -0.18

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.

Sentiment score: 0.00