Ms Kate Duggan:

There are two things to say. There are 121 family resource centres in Ireland today, that are called, named and identify as family resource centres. There are many other programmes that run throughout Ireland that look at service provision to families. However, we see an imbalance in terms of how funding has historically been allocated and perhaps not in line with the recognised and known need of the community living in that area.

As part of our reform programme, and we will be very happy to meet Deputy Murphy separately, we are moving from 17 areas to 30 networks in terms of how we structure our services and are looking at the unit of service delivery being a network. We have done some geospatial mapping. It maps all of the commissioned services that already exist within those networks but against the deprivation indexes and the demographics. That will enable us to indicate what we believe to be the evidence that is going to be needed for future resource allocation and resource requests. It will enable us to demonstrate where we need more funding, not just in our child protection services but in that family support, early intervention and parenting services. We will be able to give that by network. That is real progress for us as an agency in terms of what we have done to develop that.

In regard to the work with the HSE, obviously that begins at the front line. That needs to begin as soon as possible so that when a child or young person needs a response, that agencies within those networks are working together to deliver that response and that we are moving away-----