Ms Mary McDermott:

We have developed very complex models on the provision of safe and transitional housing, emergency crisis housing, therapeutic supports, legal supports and welfare support. This is a suite of supports that have to be provided at point of contact and along the journey. I will speak very plainly for a moment. Refuge is not the response to domestic violence. Refuge is the crisis point where it comes up to the surface of society and where people are pushed in extremisto make contact and ask for help. As Ms Graham said, the first refuges have been there for 20 years but there has been a response in communities for many decades. Many of us grew up in communities where we knew some woman or some family who would take in a woman and her children, or a man if it was the case, where there was abuse. We are talking about a response at a local level. Since Covid we can really see that community-led responses are the way forward but they cannot happen on their own. One of the reasons the response to domestic violence has been so effective, and we have had relatively low rates of femicide, for example, in this country relative to other jurisdictions, is because the community was there and the structural response was there. The Garda was on the ball. Operation Faoiseamh was successful. This has to be maintained and fully supported. It should be supported in this work.

To answer the Deputy on what are the needs, it is a specialist front-line response. All of our members around the country provide these responses in various ways relative to their resources. It is not that they do not know what to do or how to do it; it is a question of having the resources and support to do it. This includes accreditation and training, proper professional supports and being recognised as specialists in their own work. Ms Marmion or some of my colleagues will probably be well able to answer this question for the Deputy.