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

The significant change that is being made in moving the responsibility for refuges and other services to the Department of Justice is one advocacy groups and the NGOs working in the sector have been calling for for a long time.

We ran this audit and it became clear that this was the call from the sector. We are implementing that now. That is important. Even though responsibility in this area is moving out of Tusla, in the time that I have been Minister, we have significantly increased investment in Tusla in respect of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We put in an extra €2.7 million in budget 2021 and an extra €3 million in budget 2022. We have recognised this epidemic of violence against women, as the Deputy and, indeed, the programme for Government describe it. We have put in place significant additional funding for services, both core funding and Covid contingency funding. The next step is the provision of that additional refuge space. The accommodation review will allow us to focus on that and to bring forward mechanisms to, as the Deputy has put it, swiftly deliver the new refuges.

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