Ms Karen Kiernan:

We were unable to meet the demand. The reason we were unable to meet the demand was that a good deal of time was spent doing the family and risk assessments. This was not originally factored in when we designed the service because in other countries there is a court welfare system which does all the assessments for families. Therefore, family law courts in other jurisdictions already have these available. When they make a referral to a contact centre in other jurisdictions, for example, in Northern Ireland, they have all that information available and, therefore, they know what kind of services the family needs. A good deal of time was spent by our service doing these assessments. These were useful, used well by courts and judges and very much welcomed, but there was something of a bottleneck.

Originally, we carried out research based on population and we decided we would need 37 of these centres nationally, eight of which should offer a supervised contact. Now, we believe that if there was one in each child and family agency area, of which there are 17, it would be a major help to the family law courts. That would come in at €3.5 million per year, all in.