Seán Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 431: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the assistance which is given to a group (details supplied); and the further assistance the Government will give the group to continue their work. [18272/06]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I can advise the Deputy that my Department through the Probation and Welfare Service provides funding to the Ruhama project. An annual grant of €275,000 was paid to the project in 2005 and a similar amount has been approved for the current year.

The funding provided is for services to offenders, referred by the Probation and Welfare Service. Clients referred by the Service to Ruhama receive both individual and group counselling to assist in the area of prevention and rehabilitation, directly, and in liaison with other agencies.

The project itself has successfully helped women to exit prostitution and take up educational opportunities, training, employment or to develop enterprises.

Ruhama received time bound grant assistance of €381,000 under the Equality for Women Measure to enable them to develop a model of intervention that would help women in prostitution overcome the barriers they faced in joining mainstream social economy or community education schemes.

In addition, Ruhama received a grant of €26,768 to enable them to engage a coordinator in 2005 to combat trafficking in persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation; they also received a contribution of €12,000 to set up 'Ireland-en-Route', an interagency forum established to address the problem of trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation.