Mr. Bernard Gloster:

Briefly, the funding for domestic violence services within Tusla is a spend of €25 million. That is the current core budget. The budget is increasing next year essentially to €30 million, which is what the Deputy would have heard the Minister refer to in recent days. That money is essentially broken into a €2.7 million increase in core funding and another €2 million will go directly to the funded agencies providing services as part of contingency support for them, as we see how the impact of Covid unfolds in the first half of 2021. The impact is as much in the post-easing of restrictions as is it during the restrictions. That addresses the money aspect.

I take the point about the structure and the Deputy was acknowledging what I had said.

On referrals, we are running at between 1,300 and 1,350 per week and we had previously been up between 1,490 and 1,500. Those variations can happen, partly because the schools are settling down in the reopening phase and a lot of health professionals who would have been seeing children in routine circumstances are not seeing them in the same routine way because the health services are significantly redeployed and focused on different parts of the response to Covid-19. There are a variety of reasons for that and it also has to do with catch-up in our system. Once the referrals started to recover, the concern eased.

I mentioned the support for children at risk during the first lockdown. I thanked the community and voluntary sector, in particular, as well as the school completion programmes and our staff in centres around the country. The amount of work that went into making contact with and keeping an eye on children and families in a supportive way was extensive and I am satisfied with that response. In addition, I mention children who might have been seen as being at risk in the context of the domestic violence space. The Garda's Operation Faoiseamh was an outstanding contributor to public safety for some of the most vulnerable people during that March and April phase. Now that schools and everything else are open, that is the most significant change. I know there was a lot of commentary and discussion about schools as we were going into level 5. Everybody clearly understands and accepts the need to keep the school system as open and safe as possible, not just for the educational benefits but for all the other issues that have been mentioned.

I could not agree more with the Deputy about the retention of staff. It is part of the consistency issue that I and the agency are seeking to address but it takes time. Our retention rates have improved, however, and our capacity to increase recruitment has improved. The Deputy mentioned the additional funding in the budget adjustment of €61 million to Tusla. Part of that is correcting a deficit of €13 million that was already there but I envisage being able to deploy approximately 100 to 120 additional front-line staff in 2021. That would go a substantial way towards addressing the concern the Deputy expressed about the allocated cases because that is exactly where the resources and money will go.