Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I want to raise an issue I have raised on previous occasions, namely, the community I am very proud to represent, one that has its challenges but is always flourishing and has a deep history. It is a place full of strong families and deep roots, but it is a community that can often be overlooked and is struggling right now. The residents of Cabra have asked, in recognition not just of the problems but the opportunities that exist in the community, that a family resource centre be established. That is the issue I want to raise with the Minister of State.

In 2024, a group of local organisations came together to advocate for a family resource centre for Cabra. It completed a full needs analysis, backed by research from the Dublin Northwest Partnership.

They found some of the following research, information from which I will read for the Minister of State. Nearly 50% of residents in the area live in some level of disadvantage. Since 2016, there has been a 55% increase in people in the Cabra area classed as extremely disadvantaged. That is not just a statistic. That is thousands of lives at risk of falling through the cracks. When we talk about poverty or disadvantage, what we are actually talking about in many instances is what people are asked to go without. We know what factors are contributing to poverty. It is a lack of a warm coat. It is trauma that is replicated through generations and it is children being born into that environment. In Cabra West, the situation is even more urgent. Every single household in Cabra West A and B is classed as well below the average or worse with regard to deprivation. Families are facing precarious housing and isolation. Parents of kids with additional needs have a lack of safe spaces. People have to walk past visible drug dealing and there are increases in crime.

I attended the Cabra community needs launch only a few weeks ago, where a young mother of two children with additional needs described her utter desperation at a lack of services in the area for her children. One in three residents in Cabra is under the age of 30 and nearly 20% are under the age of 19, but there are next to no services for young people. Every primary school in Cabra is DEIS, and local services from youth work to school completion to sports programmes are crying out for some sort of central hub that can be a kind of space within Cabra that can start to confront the levels of deprivation and poverty. Conducting my own research using the census data, nearly a quarter of the current population of Cabra West has not gone past primary level education. There is a clear need for additional opportunities and equity in this area.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, for taking this matter today. I understand the Minister of State cannot commit to a family resource centre today. What we are looking for is acknowledgement, awareness and a sense of reality that potentially none of us knew about beforehand, with a sense of recognition that this should be considered and that support for a family resource centre where it is needed most. I understand completely that there will be significant levels of campaigning and lobbying. Every community will have its own stories of why it is in need of a family resource centre.

Cabra is a real traditional working-class heartland in a part of Dublin that most people know exists but probably have not really walked through. It is full of amazing families and local businesses. It has been inundated with people who have bought houses in Cabra recently and there is a real fusion of different peoples. We need an anchor point of recognition. That could be a family resource centre that can provide care for children, after-school supports and emotional-based supports for parents. Family resource centres have done amazing work. I am blessed with one of them on Hill Street. I have talked to the family resource centres around the country. Cabra could really benefit from one and I encourage the Minister of State to take this issue seriously.

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Gannon for raising this issue this evening. Cabra, like every other community in the country, is as entitled to it as anywhere else. I have the lived experience of the benefits of a family resource centre in my community in Bailieborough. Many moons ago, a community got together and established it in a housing estate in Bailieborough called Drumbannon. I had the privilege of starting my teaching career there, interacting with the young people in the area and interacting with the families. The service, provision, support and assistance they can give families is hugely valuable. When you see it working in a community and the benefits of it, you realise how important it is. Deputy Gannon described it well - as an anchor. It is a basis for a community and somewhere to go to. I wholeheartedly support the Deputy's campaign for this for Cabra.

The Minister, Deputy Foley, sends her apologies. She would like to be here herself but she was in the House earlier today and has a prior engagement this evening. I will pass on the Deputy's sentiment to her. I am pleased the family resource centre programme is expanding. We see that throughout the country. I think everyone will agree it is a very welcome development in the programme for Government for the member organisations and the communities the new family resource centres will serve. While I do not have specific details about each application, Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has been in contact with a representative of a subcommittee of the Cabra child and family support network, which would say to me that things are happening and beginning to move. That was to establish details of the application process related to the planned expansion of the family resource centre, FRC, programme.

As part of a range of measures aimed at reducing childhood poverty, the current programme for Government commits to work to increase funding and expand the capacity and network of FRCs. Regarding FRC programme expansion, the Minister's Department secured funding in budget 2025 for five additional FRCs. I am delighted that on Thursday, 1 May, the opening of the application process was announced by Tusla and welcomed by the Minister, Deputy Foley. This is an open call for groups and organisations to apply for FRC programme membership. I am sure the community group the Deputy is talking about is mobilised by the fact there is an open process now. It is a game-changer and it helps to focus people's minds on what the needs are. It will make it a personalised service and function for the local community in Cabra. The commissioning unit of Tusla is managing the application and selection process, with five new family resource centres expected to become operational later this year, all of which are core funded by the Department.

It is important to note that core funding is only one element of funding that family resource centres can avail of. Core funding comes from the Department and is administered by Tusla, but many family resource centres obtain other sources of funding under various Departments, State agencies and private sources. This allows them to expand the scope and reach of their services and to tailor those services to the needs of their communities. It is important to acknowledge all of these entities that offer continuing support to the FRC network and acknowledge the work done by the staff and boards of management of individual centres.

Any support the Deputy can give by being on the management committee or steering committee certainly gives it weight and emphasis. It helps to drive it on and, one would hope, to make the application a success when it goes through the process and analysis. I wish the Deputy luck with the community. I will certainly express his sentiments to the Minister, Deputy Foley, and I am sure it will be a successful application.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I thank the Minister of State for her substantial contribution and recognition of Cabra, and her personal awareness of how change-positive the family resource centres can be for a community, particularly communities that, of their own volition, recognise the need for them. Cabra is an area with such an incredible history. The GAA team there is a real focal point for the community. There is generational poverty that can only be confronted through proper State intervention and a collation of services. It is exactly as the Minister of State describes. It is something which the communities, of their own volition, have mobilised for and about which they have lobbied me and other public representatives for the area to make the case. I am delighted to be able to do so today. I know the opening of five new family resource centres will be a competitive application. I am certainly not trying to lobby any more than using my position as a public representative for an area to give a voice.

I ask that when this consideration is being made, the Department looks at the statistics. The deprivation level in Cabra is really pronounced. It is more than probably exists in many other parts of the country. Because Cabra is around 2 km away from the city centre, it is often lost in conversations. When we talk about crime in the city centre, we are more likely to focus on the parts we pass through, like O'Connell Street. Cabra is a place that has experienced all the hardship of deprivation, poverty and social exclusion, but it has not received the same level of public attention, probably as a consequence of public representatives who have not given enough voice to it. We want that to be recognised. We want the request for a family resource centre to be based in evidence, awareness and acknowledgement that there is a community here looking to step up and see itself as part of that State infrastructure, to confront the challenges which it recognises but for which also it sees the solutions.

Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy is right in what he said that they can be the heart and soul and can be designed in such a way that they really respond to the nuances of a community, because communities' needs are not always the same. It is a real opportunity when a new application process is opened. The Deputy is well entitled to stand here and advocate for the Cabra centre, especially when, as he said himself, it will be highly competitive. Cabra is as deserving as anywhere else in the country.

The Deputy is right that these will have to be backed up. I am sure Department officials will look at all the applications, facts, deprivation, needs and perhaps new communities living in the area. All that must be taken into account.

Teach Na nDaoine in Monaghan town is another exemplar, if I was to use one, for what it can achieve. There is even a community shop there along with educational services and many wrap-around services as well as after-school services. If there are any new ideas, the centre is doing it. I encourage the Deputy's group in Cabra to go to Monaghan and have a chat with the centre there. It has been on the go for 20 years so it has hit all the loopholes and different challenges. For community groups to get something like this up and running is not easy but as the Deputy said himself - and I am telling him here tonight - there is a great opportunity with the scheme just newly opened and money set aside and ring-fenced for it. The Minister, Deputy Foley, has her heart and soul behind these centres because there is one in her own community too. She feels very strongly for them and I am sure if she could roll out ten in one year, she would.

I wish the Deputy well in advocating for Cabra and as I said, throwing his weight behind it and standing up for the community there I am sure will go a long way in ensuring it gets its family resource centre.