“Having private, for-profit care goes against all you are trying to achieve for children in care,” says Terry Dignan, a spokesperson for charities that run children’s homes.
Councils are reluctant to use the single-stage process because they take on more risk if something goes wrong, says Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
Over the past 18 months, we piloted a youth journalism training programme for people aged between 17 and 23, who care about the city.
It included a three-month course, with classes once a week, followed by one-to-one mentoring on stories, some of which we published. We're trying to work out how to make it a sustainable ongoing project.
Part of it has been sharing what we know about journalism and how to do it. And part of it has been listening to Dubliners in this age group, to see what kind of news they want to see and also where they want to find that news.
The initiative was part of the YoCoJoin project, a pan-European initiative co-funded by the European Union, involving five other newsrooms and organisations who all have been working under the guidance of the Dutch local public broadcaster Omroep Tilburg.
Courts reporter Stephen Bourke gives students an interactive lecture on what it's like to cover the criminal justice system (L); students get stuck into a photography challenge during one of the classes (R)