How a government funding increase could mean less money for the rape crisis centres which need it most

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs had an extra €1.5 million to spend on domestic, sexual and gender based violence services this year. In April, the department asked Tusla to suggest what the €1.5 million should be spent on.

Tusla put together a document identifying what the priority areas were. For sexual violence, Tusla identified the rape crisis centres which needed the funding the most. It said that Kerry rape crisis centre needed €30,000 more this year to reduce long waiting lists and waiting times for survivors. It said Mayo, Tipperary and Galway also needed money to address waiting times. Tusla said €80,000 would be needed to improve the reach of sexual violence services across the midlands and €50,000 to do the same in the border counties. Cork needed "greater coherence" between its sexual violence services.

Tusla already had plans in place for how the money was going to be spent at rape crisis centres, and in at least two rape crisis centres the extra money was needed just to cover the cost of providing existing services for survivors of sexual violence. In Galway, €30,000 was needed just for the “ELS” (existing level of service) and €15,000 in funding was also recorded as being for ELS for Tipperary’s rape crisis centre.  

Instead, Katherine Zappone, children and youth affairs minister, decided to split €476,600 of the €1.5 million between all 16 rape crisis centres; giving each one a 10 per cent increase in funding. In an email on April 17, Joan Mullen, the head of domestic, sexual and gender based violence at Tusla, warned the department that spending the money this way would have “implications” on rape crisis services, especially for plans to develop rape crisis services in West Cork “as there are not likely to be available resources to see through implementation.”

The funding increase was announced by the government on April 25. The same day, Ms Mullen wrote to her own staff in Tusla’s sexual violence services to tell them the government had decided to split the funding increase between all 16 rape crisis centres, and said she had raised concerns about this decision “given what we know about varying needs around the country.” Four days later, Ms Mullen wrote to Eifion Williams, the service director of Tusla, and explained the “fall-out” of the decision. She said that “allocating funding in this across-the-board way means that we won’t have resources to follow through on some indicative service developments.” Ms Mullen said there would be “implications” on how Tusla was funding existing levels of service at some rape crisis centres. Other documents appear to list this funding as being for Galway and Tipperary rape crisis centres.

“So there will be a bit more bad news to share down the line,” Ms Mullen wrote in the email.

Under the government decision, Kerry ended up getting €22,000 instead of the €30,000 which Tusla said it needed to tackle growing waiting lists.

Separate documents compiled by Tusla, and released to JOE, show that the state agency has estimated that under plans to split funding between all 16 rape crisis centres, €144,500 of rape crisis funding will be “likely” to be unspent this year.

A spokesman for Tusla said that it was standard practice for the state agency to flag issues with the department which “may or may not arise.”

“In this particular case, there have been no detrimental funding implications for the services involved. While it is the case that no agreed service developments have been ruled out at this point in time, the timing and staging of developments, and clarity in relation to their emerging costs, requires flexibility,” the spokesman said.