Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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1087. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs if Tusla will produce an annual report on sexual violence statistics for 2016 in 2017; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45629/17]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has statutory responsibility for the provision of services to victims of domestic, sexual and gender based violence, and provides funding to some 60 organisations nationally to deliver these services.

Since 2015, Tusla has been working in partnership with funded domestic, sexual and gender based violence services to enhance the quality and availability of data relating to the use of services. Using information provided by the funded services, Tusla will shortly be issuing a report on the activities and uptake of these services in 2016. The report will include data pertaining to the use of all specialist sexual violence/rape crisis services funded by Tusla nationally, and relates only to those who use these services.

Tusla is mindful of obligations under the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention)to gather and report on domestic, sexual and gender based violence nationally, and is working in collaboration with other bodies towards achieving Gold Standard for data collection in these services.