Ms Kate Duggan:

I share the Deputy's view and commitment. All of my clinical background over 20 years ago was in early intervention services across a range of disability and mental health services and in supporting and working with families. A cornerstone of our reform programme is increasing and expanding our early intervention services. The Deputy talked about the support that is required pre-birth. That is critical. We are proud to fund more than 121 family resource centres with the core funding they are provided through Government. We also work with many of those centres on individualised programmes that meet the needs of those communities, so where further additional funding is required for a specific intervention, that is very important. We work with colleagues in the HSE on pre-natal and post-natal care.

I will let Mr. Hone come in with more detail but from my perspective, I am proud of one initiative that we have started working on. We are working with an organisation called Inniu on the provision of residential care to pregnant, vulnerable homeless women. We have recently funded, with the council, work on step-down, transitionary accommodation to allow them to step down and move towards independent living. I visited that centre recently and was delighted to see the impact that we can make. Through the budget this year, we also have funding to launch five new family resource centres. The process is under way. We had 49 applications. We are working through all those applications to prioritise the five new locations. I expect that will be announced in the next week or two. We are very committed to the work of family resource centres and the difference they make in communities across the country.