Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question and know exactly what she means. She and I have both met the representative bodies for family resource centres. It is particularly because of having listened to them that I have focused investment on existing family resource centres as distinct from adding new ones, as we did last year. The representative bodies and individual family resource centres identified that they there was potentially a need for a full staff member or the equivalent of half a staff member here and there. I was informed that to develop services, centres would like to increase provision for a wider number of children and families. That is why Tusla has gone through a very careful process of meeting those involved in individual family resource centres to see what each centre considers to be necessary in order, first, to stand still having regard to the fact that costs have increased and, second, to meet the additional cost of developing services. We could discuss whether they should move from having one full-time worker to three or from one to one and a half and if that would be a development cost or something required to stand still. That is the granular analysis taking place of family resource centres to determine their individual needs, as distinct from me saying we want to provide money in order that every centre will have the same number of staff.