Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I again thank the Deputy for raising this matter. He knows that the State has come through a very tough period. As a result of visiting different groups in recent months, I have become very much aware that many of them lost a great deal of funding and that services have been curtailed as a result. I hope that we may be able to reverse the position in this regard in the coming years.

I wish to emphasise that I cannot speak highly enough of Tiglin - I mean this most sincerely - and I have visited the centre on a few occasions. Deputy Curran made the point about the €50,000 being once-off funding. I will raise that issue. If Tiglin got this funding in 2015 and 2016 and there was no emphasis made that this was once-off funding, then this surely indicates that the opposite was the case. I agree with the Deputy about the tone of the letter, especially the part in which it is stated that Tiglin should go elsewhere to look for funding. I do not believe that is acceptable in any way. One of the things I have learnt in the past couple of months is that throughout all of the CHO areas, everybody is responsible for people coming in to a service from that particular area, so they should be able to fund the services to help those people in a place such as Tiglin. I will not say any more but I will certainly examine the matter further in the next day or two and revert to Deputy Curran in respect of it.

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