Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 December 2014
326. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if he will provide, in tabular form by county, the funding his Department has provided for youth cafés every year since 2011. [49094/14]
View answerIn recent years there has been a significant investment in the development of youth café facilities in Ireland and capital funding has been made available to my Department for these facilities.
In 2013 a capital allocation of € 1.5m was made available to my Department for a new Youth Café scheme. In all 95 applications with proposals for new youth cafés were received and some 30 proposals were approved for funding. These projects are currently working with Pobal to develop their projects to the next stage. In 2012 €.5m was made available to my Department and 8 proposals for new youth cafés were approved.
In 2010/2011 €1.5m was allocated to support the provision of Youth Café facilities and 64 projects were approved for funding. There were two strands to the funding scheme. Strand 1 was for new youth cafés and strand 2 provided grants for upgrading or maintenance/ improvement to existing cafés. As a result 16 new youth café were approved and 48 existing youth cafés received grants to upgrade facilities. An additional €200,000 was made available by my Department in December 2011 to support a further 18 youth projects in providing or maintaining youth cafés facilities.
A detailed list by county of the youth café projects funded is being compiled by my Department and will be forwarded to the Deputy shortly.
