Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that. First and foremost, the saver status has meant that these services have managed to continue with the quotient of service users already using the service. The problem is that this set of kids, if they were to apply now, probably would not meet the criteria. While there was a workaround for the services, whether it was Tusla, Louth County Council or a number of other bodies that could make referrals, they thought this would be a simple enough process and that, let us say, Tusla would be able to facilitate, but Tusla is not doing so. We are talking about a low-intervention service that really helps families in really disadvantaged areas. The problem is that the people running these services are already talking about people coming to them and saying, "We know that people have left this service and we want our kid to get into the service." They do not necessarily understand the difficulties we are having at the minute. We need to sort out the referral service or a separate funding stream.

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