Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In my constituency there is a women's refuge. Deputy Smith mentioned this perhaps being more common in urban areas but I do not know if that is the case, although I am certainly aware of it. I recently dealt with a family where the partner had a serious crack cocaine drug problem. The house was being turned into a crack house, there were children there, domestic violence, and people were coming in to intimidate others and to look for money for drugs, and guns were being produced. It is similar to some of the worst cases the group has dealt with in its own centre. There was a difficulty, however, in trying to rehouse the woman in a refuge and after a time she wanted to move back into the house. There were no support services and she was literally moving back into a tip with young children and very little support for basic services like having the door fixed. If these support services were in place it would be a massive help, with a one-stop-shop for services that would give people more confidence to escape this situation. It is a visionary idea in that sense. How would it impact on existing services and how would they be complementary? Would it pull the services into the centre or would it be additional to them?

How can connections be made for training on a North-South basis? Funding is the difficult area. The centre will be based in a relatively old building so I presume that could cause some problems. Is it a safe and secure area? We are talking about figures of up to 1,000 cases per month but would that be for throughout the North? Would they all be directed to this centre?