John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. When she has time we may be able to visit Quarryvale family resource centre. Its grant for 2017 was €86,500. When the Minister was announcing additional funding on Friday last, she spoke about 11 new family resource centres and made available funding of €1.76 million for them, which is €160,000 per family resource centre and almost double what the Quarryvale family resource centre currently receives. The centre is very constrained. Too much of the time of development workers there is taken up with fundraising to keep essential services running. In an area of huge disadvantage, those workers now hear of new family resource centres that will be funded at twice the level of their centre. Therein lies the challenge. I acknowledge that the Minister is expanding the number of centres but some family resource centres that are working from the core base of two employees have huge issues in their areas. They do not just need an annual grant, their core funding must be significantly increased to allow them move from a two-person to three-person operations in order to meet the needs in their communities.

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