Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I understand that the Minister for Health is engaged in the other House but I want to bring to his attention, as I am sure does the Minister of State, Deputy Dara Murphy, the plight of Cuan Álainn, a women’s and children’s refuge in Tallaght. It was founded in 2012 by the housing association Respond! and has provided a safe harbour for some 64 for women and 84 children since then. It is a refuge with a difference in so much as it is a second-stage facility designed to provide temporary accommodation and advice to women referred by emergency refuges or other State agencies. Without such a facility, women and children have no choice but to return to abusive partners or be allocated to accommodation for the homeless. Expert opinion suggests the service is necessary and value for money.

Respond! undertook in 2012 to fund this service for three years. It can no longer do so. The annual cost is somewhere between €320,000 and €350,000. Respond! is now confronted by what it says is an unavoidable decision, to close Cuan Álainn. State agencies, including Tusla, accept that Respond! has identified a definite need to care for women and children who must move on from emergency refuges. The typical stay may be from six to nine months while alternative arrangements are made to procure housing for the women and children concerned. I accept the budgetary situation remains difficult and that, in particular, the Tusla budget is under pressure. However, it would be shameful if Cuan Álainn were allowed to close because it serves a huge catchment area where the need is great, as the Acting Chairman, Deputy Olivia Mitchell, knows.

I thank the Minister of State for taking this issue. I ask him to examine whether steps can be taken to protect the service. By way of being helpful, I suggest respectfully that, in the short term, he engage with his colleague the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, to examine whether it is within the competence of both Departments to save the service from closure. If it does close, it will be axiomatic that the cost to the State to provide alternatives will be more expensive.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I apologise on behalf of the Minister for Health, who is not available at present. I thank Deputy Rabbitte for raising this topical and important issue and I welcome the opportunity to clarify the Government's approach to the funding of domestic violence services generally. Cuan Álainn, as Deputy Rabbitte has said, provides second-stage accommodation for women and children who are experiencing domestic violence and who may have been in emergency accommodation. The centre opened in 2012 and is funded by Respond! Housing Association.

Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, allocates available funding for domestic violence to emergency refuge accommodation services and community-based domestic violence supports. Tusla endorses the use of second-stage refuge and supported accommodation to enable people to move on from emergency accommodation. While it does not currently fund such services, it has indicated that it hopes to support them in the future based on the direction it intends to pursue. Tusla met Respond! recently and advised that, as matters stand, it is not in a position to fund this service in the current year.

It might be helpful for Members if I share some background to the arrangements for dealing with this issue at a strategic level.

Due to the complex nature of the issues involved in domestic and sexual based violence, and the need for a co­ordinated and effective response to these issues, the National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based Violence was established as an executive office in the Department of Justice and Equality in 2007 and that Department currently has overall policy responsibility in this area. It has formulated a comprehensive cross-Government strategy, which combines the efforts of a very broad range of organisations and individuals, to combat all forms of domestic, sexual and gender based violence. The national office is currently in the process of finalising a new cross-sectoral strategy from 2015 onwards.

In terms of service delivery, Tusla which was established on 1 January 2014, has taken on responsibility for the provision of domestic, sexual and gender based violence services which were previously funded by the HSE. For the first time this service is under national direction. We now have a single line of accountability and a consolidated national budget which is reserved for allocation to these particular services. Domestic, sexual and gender based violence services can now be delivered within a broad child and family support framework and this represents a significant change to the previous service delivery model.

Tusla will continue to work closely with service providers to ensure that women and children fleeing domestic abuse receive all necessary support and the position in respect of the Cuan Alainn service will be kept under review.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. It seems that the broad orientation of policy he outlined is probably correct. The tragedy, however, is that if we let this facility close it would be very difficult to re-establish it.

The Minister of State made the point in his response that Tusla has indicated that it would hope to support such services in the future but in 2015 this particular refuge is in crisis. The funding required to keep it open for the remaining half of the year is not a very large amount. It was suppose to close down in March, as the commitment given was that it would be funded for three years. We are up against it now as we face into the remaining half of the year.

I did not appreciate fully that there is a role, as envisaged here, for the Department of Justice and Equality. Respond! has also a connection evidently with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. I know things are tight. I hear their lordships on radio complaining that the cut in the Tusla funding to Accord is retaliation by the Government because of the prominent role of some Catholic prelates in the equality referendum. They seem prepared to ignore the assurance of the Minister that it was not so. The refuge in Tallaght certainly is not involved in the referendum. That is not the reason funding is being cut. It is clear to everybody, and ought to be clear to their lordships, that Tusla has a funding problem, having taken over new responsibilities this year.

In respect of this particular initiative by Respond! which is acknowledged by all the agencies involved, by the HSE, the emergency refuges around south Dublin and the county council, as being a splendid service where women fleeing domestic violence, who do not have any other alternative except to go back to the abusive partner, have a facility to move on while housing is being procured for them. It is a very valuable initiative. It represents value for money. The alternative would cost the State more.

I ask the Minister of State to engage with the Minister for Justice and Equality and the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to see if a half year's funding for the refuge can be put together while the new model of service he spoke about can be settled on by the respective Departments.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I would agree with the Deputy's comments. Respond! does excellent work and any suggestion of any ulterior motives, as the Deputy said, would be erroneous in the extreme.

I take on board the point about the ambition for future years that is clearly expressed in the reply I gave to the Deputy's important Topical Issue matter. I will raise the issue, responsibility for which is spread across three Departments, with the Minister for Health and also with the other two Ministers concerned and make them aware of the shared responsibility in this respect, and I will ask them to revert to the Deputy with their responses.