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

I am a strong supporter of the work of family resource centres. In recent weeks, I have visited the centre in my own community in Mountview, as well as centres in Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick and Clare, and have seen the amazing work they do.

I am pleased to say that in the budget announced yesterday I secured an additional €800,000 for the family resource centre programme. That will allow five new family resource centres to be opened around the country next year. That allocation is in addition to the funding equalisation programme I operated in April; through that I raised the core funding for all family resource centres to €160,000. Some were below €100,000 but all family resource centres now get, at minimum, €160,000. Their desire is for a minimum of €240,000 and I want to work to that but I explained to the sector at the time I was undertaking a step-by-step process. I want to grow the network and ensure the existing network is sustainable. We took a good step towards sustainability in April. We worked on that in the Department outside of the budget and we brought that forward.

We saw a pay award in October of last year under the WRC for section 39 and 56 organisations, of which family resource centres are part. There is a pay negotiation ongoing involving those same organisations. If there is agreement on that, staff in family resource centres will benefit.

It is a dual role. We want to grow the number of family resource centres around the country and increase the sustainability of all of them. Through the budget yesterday and the funding equalisation announcement earlier in the year, I have taken a substantial step towards achieving both.

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