Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Mine is a related matter. I have sought permission from the Leas-Cheann Comhairle to raise the urgent need for Government funding to enable the Galway rape crisis centre to continue to provide its services. Such additional funding will enable it to meet its shortfall in the current year and lay the basis for an expanded service, given the heavy public demand.

As we have just heard, there is an urgent need to put the funding on a secure basis. The Galway rape crisis centre, for example, receives €180,000 in the current year while its need is about €360,000. It could provide a comprehensive service for about €570,000 annually. One might therefore well ask if this involves the provision of a basic right. Reason suggests the funding be provided on a statutory basis rather than relying on voluntary fundraising year in, year out. In the 22 years since the centre was founded there have been many crises and the centre has had to be saved time and again. It has 11 members of staff. It began as a service run by volunteers to become one that has six part-time councillors and project workers, two education workers, two part-time administrators, a co-ordinator, and ten to 15 volunteers.

The position is simple. Because of what is available, it can run a service that is operational for five and a half hours per day Monday to Friday and three hours on a Saturday but no service on Sunday. The Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Tim O'Malley, will be aware of the SAVI report in 2001 which reported on the whole area of sexual violence. One of the most disturbing findings of that report was the reluctance of victims to report or speak about their experience. They find the setting of the rape crisis centres very satisfactory in terms of the counselling and professional care. The care is not just provided on the premises. It extends to accompanying victims, to reporting and visiting them. When I say a service that would be complete and full, what I mean is a service that would be able to extend into these reasonable areas where there is a demand for it.

In this day and age we must realise that recovery from a sexual attack, which is traumatic, takes a long time. We have just heard from Deputy Healy the long-term consequences in terms of the treatment and also the difficulty and failure to recover. The service should be provided on a rights basis with adequate supporting statutory funding. The idea, for example, that the service might continue or not on the basis of voluntary funding through participation in, say, the women's marathon or something similar, is no longer satisfactory. In the current year, as I understand it, the centre needs an extra €300,000. If one takes the figure which appears frozen at approximately €180,000, it has to be unfrozen immediately.

In most cities of the size of Galway there is a sexual assault unit. For example, there is one in the local hospitals in Tralee and Waterford and in the Rotunda in Dublin. If such a unit was attached to a Galway hospital it would be a useful and valuable ancillary support. It would mean that all these centres and services could be provided. They are not a luxury but a basic right. It is no longer acceptable that they would move from one precarious situation to another given that they provide such a valuable and necessary service.

Most of the survey work for the SAVI report was carried out in July 2001, almost five years ago. That report made eight specific recommendations ranging from education, the removal of all barriers to access to reporting and so on and, the important point, that the extension of services be anticipated and provided in advance before the need became so demonstrated that it could not be avoided. I ask the Minister of State to make an announcement that he intends to address these issues as a matter of urgency.

See this speech in context