Leaving Cert<\/a> but in reality almost all successful applicants have the Leaving Cert. <\/p>\nThe team at The Den routinely find teenagers have been diverted into the Leaving Cert Applied (LCA), \u201cwhere they thrive\u201d, but they then effectively find themselves excluded from the career they wanted to pursue. <\/p>\n
Janis also points to the hairdressing profession, where young women traditionally \u201cstarted sweeping the floor, then worked their way up\u201d. Now, she says, there is a greater college element and related emphasis on educational requirements. <\/p>\n
Her colleague Val Farrell spoke to local farriers about taking on apprentices \u2013 there is a lot of local interest in horses and the work is well paid, she says \u2013 but was told the off-site training element has made it less attractive to take someone on.<\/p>\n
Conor suggests the school curriculum is a big issue with young people, as he has struggled to see its relevance in the working world. The more practical nature of courses he has taken since leaving school make far more sense to him, he says.<\/p>\n
![\"Crosscare](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/RVAE7NB2O5BUTIDJUNC2VEX5KA.JPG\")
Crosscare staff Ciara Murphy, Janis Maxwell, Karl McDermott and Val Farrell at The Den. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n
Ciara Murphy, the centre\u2019s manager, acknowledges this is an issue mentioned by many young people who have passed through its programmes over the four years she has been there, and she is strongly supportive of the more practically orientated LCA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an area like this, though, I think even the schools are often just trying to survive. They\u2019re just trying to get as many kids to stay in school and sometimes they get them to do the LCA because they stay longer,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
All the staff have heard stories of local teacher shortages and Conor says he knows of a school where a class went through an entire Leaving Cert cycle without a full-time woodwork teacher but with a succession of substitutes.<\/p>\n
Farrell also points to the long waiting lists for assessments of needs, an assessment carried out by the HSE for young people with a disability. The delays, she believes, can deprive children of the supports they need for their development.<\/p>\n
Outside of traditional trades, there are diminishing options for young people short on recognised skills, with Murphy suggesting that jobs such as those in supermarkets have dried up because of self-checkout lanes and other technological changes. <\/p>\n
Looming large over all of this is the attraction presented by the seemingly easy money from criminality, with local gangs paying kids to run errands, which can often be an early entanglement from which some never extract themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in front of you, a full Sunday dinner on a plate. It\u2019s just a question of whether you stay away from it,\u201d says Conor.<\/p>\n
Karl McDermott, a youth justice worker, says those who have become disheartened about their prospects of getting work or have issues at home are most vulnerable. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf the young fellas are getting disheartened, people smell it,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019ll be someone whose ma might be an addict, or they\u2019re in a single-parent family and there\u2019s not much money in the house. People smell that and they offer them \u20ac300 or whatever to do something. And when you\u2019re in, it\u2019s hard to get out again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of money in it when you\u2019re younger and you can do things without serious consequences,\u201d says Murphy.<\/p>\n
Nathan Ronan (20) did just that: he became embroiled with \u201cthe wrong crowd\u201d after leaving school at 16 with no qualifications.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got people that tell you to go do this, you go do that, and then they just give you … wherever you want. I experienced all that but thank God I got away from it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He wishes, he says, that he had his time in school to do again. Now, he is trying to get work as a warehouse operative or stores assistant.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they\u2019re pretty hard to find,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
All told, he has applied for about 200 jobs, he estimates, the vast majority of which don\u2019t even generate a response. <\/p>\n
He busies himself coaching a couple of local football teams, hoping to keep younger kids involved in the game, and is doing some volunteering at the centre. About 200 young people pass through it each week, availing of arts, cookery and other facilities. There is a breakfast club, pool competitions and, for the older ones, all of the employment supports. <\/p>\n
Murphy says they are well resourced, with a budget of about \u20ac1.2 million providing for 19 full- and part-time staff but she reckons they would quickly have as many users again if there was the money to open a similar centre in West Finglas.<\/p>\n
[\u00a0What is an apprenticeship – and what are the benefits?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\nThe national statistics on young people and work are not all bad; the most recent CSO labour force survey showed an increase in the number of young people working. But youth employment was up too, the result of a spike in births between 2007 and 2012 that is now starting to be seen in the workforce.<\/p>\n
CSO statistician Colin Hanley says that while the proportion of young people in the labour force has remained unchanged at 15 per cent over the past decade, the proportion of people who are unemployed between the ages of 15 and 24 has gone from 25 per cent to 35 per cent. <\/p>\n
\u201cAmong 15 to 19 year-olds it has gone from 9 per cent to 17 per cent,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Michael McLoughlin of the National Youth Council of Ireland describes the growing number of young unemployed as a \u201ccanary in the coal mine that can\u2019t be ignored\u201d. <\/p>\n
Among some of those on the margins, though, there is clearly a belief the music stopped quite a while ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s growing headline unemployment figures mask a mix of age- and sector-related trends. But for all the complexity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,14787,61,60,45841,3184],"class_list":{"0":"post-178468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-central-statistics-office","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-junior-cert","13":"tag-leaving-certificate"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}