Dr. Niall Muldoon:

Yes, the Cathaoirleach is right. That was a particularly difficult letter for me to write. We had been extremely encouraged by the new domestic, sexual and gender-based violence strategy. It was the third strategy that came into place. For the first time, it mentioned children as victims and acknowledged that children need action from the State around domestic and gender-based violence. Then, the Department of Justice came to us - we did not go looking for it - and asked whether we would look at overseeing the actions with regard to children in this action plan over the next five years. We said that it was a great idea and we would love to do it but that we needed an extra bit of resources. The Department said that should not be a problem and there would be no issue with that. We got into negotiations on that basis. We agreed to have our name put into the implementation plan through the Department of Justice on the basis that it would link with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and create a funding source for us, so that we could bring in new staff because we did not have staff. We knew we would need staff at a high level to do this full time. We want somebody who is going to be strong and able to negotiate across different levels. We engaged with full openness and transparency around it. We let it go in the first year in the budget when it did not come through.

We had been negotiating for approximately one year at that stage. I met the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in November of that year and he had never heard of it. After one year of negotiating with the Department of Justice, we let that go by. We followed through the following year and said that we had to make sure this happens now. It did not come through the following year either. I met with the Minister for Justice who said it was not going to happen either. When it did not happen the third time, I said that what the Department was doing at that point in time was giving credibility to its actions by using our organisation. I said we were not going to allow that to happen again. The Minister for Justice was very disappointed and said it was not her problem and that it was the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth's job to get the money for this office. That is not the way the negotiations had gone previously. It was meant to be a joint operation. The last piece of hope we had was that the Revised Estimates this year might give something. That has not happened either. Unfortunately, as ever, we are now seeing another situation in which we have a fabulous piece of paper with all the right things on it but not the willingness to put it-----