I have tried on at least ten occasions to raise this matter in the Dáil and I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise it this evening. I have five minutes in which to outline the serious problems being encountered by the youth service at present and to ask the Minister of State at the Department of Education with special responsibility for youth and sport what he is prepared to do in an effort to solve the deepening financial crisis facing the service.
At the outset I should like to give the Minister of State some background information. The youth service has been the subject of a variety of policy statements since the mid-seventies. The Minister of State's bible, according to himself, is the Costello report first published in 1984. I agree with the Minister of State that this comprehensive and far reaching report should form the basis of our youth service. Notwithstanding this avowal of support for the Costello report and the guarantee given by the Minister of State on taking office that the Costello report would form the basis of the youth service structure, to put it mildly the youth service now find themselves in a financial mess through no fault of their own but rather as a result of mismanagement of the money allocated to the youth service by both the Minister and his Department.
In 1988 the youth service were allocated £10 million, £8 million in 1989, £8.3 million in 1990 and the proposed allocation for 1991 is £9.761 million. While it can be said that increased allocations have been made since 1989, we should have regard to the key 1988 figure, £10 million. At no stage since then has the allocation exceeded that base figure and it is only now, two and a half years later, that the consequences of not giving the youth service the £10.6 million they need to maintain services at their 1988 level are being felt. I wish to emphasise that this sum amounts to only half the figure recommended in the Minister of State's bible, the Costello report published in 1984. At present day values the Costello report would recommend that at least £25 million be allocated to the youth service.
Another point which has not gone unnoticed on this side of the House is that the allocation for the youth service from national lottery funds dropped from a figure of 27 per cent of the total in 1988 to 17 per cent in 1989 and to a mere 16 per cent in 1990. Equally, the allocation under the heading sport, recreation and youth decreased from 50 per cent of the total at the end of 1988 to 45 per cent at the end of 1990. The question I would like to ask the Minister of State is what criteria were used in arriving at these decisions.
What are the consequences of this lack of sufficient funds for the youth service? First, they will lose 35 staff by the end of the year. The National Youth Council of Ireland today briefed the Minister of State on this matter but it should be remembered that funds have already been allocated and job losses are imminent. It would appear, therefore, that face-saving is the order of the day and I challenge the Minister of State to tell us how he is going to solve the problem, rather than what was discussed, given that decisions have already been taken and funds allocated to the youth service.
I wish to emphasise that it is disadvantaged young people who will have to bear the brunt of the cutbacks and forced job losses. For example, Voluntary Service International have had to abandon their teenage workcamp programme and Foróige have had to abandon their summer programme and events for this year. Both programmes were targeted specifically at disadvantaged young people involved in those youth organisations. I expect the Minister of State to say in reply to these charges that the allocation for the youth service has in fact remained unchanged — I know and accept this to be true — but he must realise that mainstream youth organisations are to the forefront in providing youth services for disadvantaged young people. The report on disadvantaged young people commissioned by the Minister in 1988 and undertaken by the National Youth Council of Ireland underlines the comprehensive response of the youth service to young people suffering from socio-economic disadvantage.
I call on the Minister of State to undertake immediately the following steps——
