Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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86. To ask the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of family resource centres that applied to come in under the national forum that were not successful; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [49909/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I can confirm to the Deputy that the number of applications to join the Family Resource Programme that were unsuccessful on this occasion was forty-four.

A total of forty-nine organisations applied for membership of the Family Resource Centre Programme. This followed on from an announcement of an open call for applications to join the Programme, made possible by my Department securing funding, as part of Budget 2025, to expand the Programme from 121 members to 126 members.

I announced on 29 August 2025 the five successful services joining the Programme in 2025. These services are based in Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Louth and Monaghan.

This is the first expansion of the Family Resource Centre Programme since 2018.

A comprehensive national application and assessment process was undertaken, which was led by Tusla and independently chaired by a representative of the University of Limerick. All applications were reviewed and scored against the clearly defined and published criteria, including population need, level of deprivation, child population data, existing service provision and existing service gaps. Decisions on the successful services were made by the assessment panel.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish five new Programme members well in their future endeavours.