Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We want to look at the Covid funding and, in light of the changed circumstances and reintroduction of lockdown, I will engage with Tusla on the Covid element over the next six weeks. It is important that, Covid aside, we have a significant increase in investment in Tusla and, in my engagement with the chair, Pat Rabbitte, and the CEO, Bernard Gloster, I outlined that I wanted to see domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, DSGBV, services broadly prioritised, Covid aside, in that spending. I am aware that they have had some increases but it has been a slow increase over the years. The Deputy touched on the fact that the pandemic has highlighted what we describe in the programme for Government as an epidemic of domestic violence that has always been taking place in this society. I also saw, including in my own community, communities rallying around the local refuge through fundraising and I hope we can build on that.

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