Mr. Eoghan Duffy:

I thank the Senator. On employment and disability, as she said, there was the Mind the Gap report, which was supported through the civic society fund and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. That was published. It was a substantive piece of work. There was also resourcing for a big conference held in Dundalk. That was attended by our Department of Social Protection along with many stakeholders and civil society groups. Bringing it forward also involves those two levels. There is certainly opportunity for civil society to access the civic society fund to do very practical things around connecting, advocacy, support services and learning. There is then the same opportunity for Departments to interact and to see what they already do in this space and what they can do more of. It may not all be questions of resourcing. It might be about co-operation, linking services and so on. It is about getting Departments to look at that in the round. The Department of Social Protection is aware of that report. That is the kind of conversation we are having with all Departments all of the time. We ask them how they can take this on board and, as Ms Deane said, how they can mainstream it into the planning of services from the start.

It is very much the same with regard to gender-based violence. The Senator mentioned the National Women's Council of Ireland, which has formed an all-island women's forum over a number of years. That has been supported through the civic society fund. That forum published a report on gender-based violence, which was supported by the two justice Ministers last year. That work directly informed the sense that a full scoping of the incidence of and policy responses to gender-based violence, North and South, is timely and needed. It is recognised that there is scope to do more with what is obviously an island-wide problem. There is ESRI research building on what the NWCI did. We had interaction with civil society groups, North and South, on that research. We will continue to do that. The research will continue to talk to them directly. It is not just desk work. It involves talking to the stakeholders to produce something that Ministers, North and South, can engage with to see what could practically follow.