The Catholic Youth Council has expressed concern at what it describes as the increasing commercial exploitation of summer activities for children.
The director of the council, Father Martin Clarke, was particularly critical of the use of school premises for summer camps which were being run primarily for financial gain. He said such camps "play on the sense of anxiety, or indeed guilt, which parents experience during the summer holidays".
The council provides low cost recreational and educational activities for 60,000 children in Dublin. Father Clarke described Government grants to voluntary youth organisations as "wholly inadequate".