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

Tusla administers the family resource centre programme, which provides funding support to 121 centres across the country. My Department allocates core funding for the programme. Since 2019 we have provided an additional €1.5 million to this important service and funding for 2021 amounted to €18 million.

My Department also secured funding for Tusla to support existing family resource centres, primarily with expenses relating to equipment and premises, through the dormant accounts fund for 2020 and 2021. Tusla is currently arranging to pay over €650,000 to relevant centres from 2021 dormant accounts funding.

Tusla provided once-off additional supports during 2021 to many of its community and voluntary sector bodies, including family resource centres, to assist them in responding to Covid challenges. As the Deputy mentioned, Tusla works with community-based family support centres and organisations and the two existing family resource centres in Carrick-on-Shannon and Mohill, to meet the needs of vulnerable children, families and communities.

My Department and Tusla have formed a family support subgroup to better understand the demand in this sector and to understand demand for family recourse centres. The output from this group is intended to be an integrated model of family support that expounds the national service delivery framework and provides clarity to policymakers, practitioners and service users across the continuum of need. In carrying out this work it will look at existing provision of family support and resource allocation to family support.

In budget 2022, Tusla has been allocated €899 million, which is an increase of €41 million. The specific amount to be used in 2022 for its various services, including family resource centres, has not yet been finalised. The matter will be addressed in the agency's business plan that will be submitted to my Department in the coming weeks. I have issued my performance statement to Tusla outlining the overall performance parameters for Tusla. In response to this, Tusla will prepare its annual business plan for 2022 and within that it will outline its provision of support for family resource centres.

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