Ministers to discuss funding for Childline

Howlin pledges to raise the issue of finding the €600k to keep the helpline serviced 24 hours a day

Pleas for emergency funding for Childline will be discussed by ministers amid calls to help keep the much needed service for children operating.

Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said he would raise the issue of the funding shortfall for the 24-hour helpline so services can remain available in the evening for children in need. However, he stressed there were many important helplines, all of which required funding.

The commitment comes after Fianna Fáil whip Sean O’Fearghail raised the dilemma for the charity which could close unless it manages to access extra funds.

Speaking in the Dáil, he said that the funding crisis needed to be addressed.

“The service was established in 1998 but the ISPCC now indicates that it cannot continue to provide a service in the evening. The sort of money involved — €600,000 — is not astronomical and not beyond the minister for children to give that funding,” he said.

Mr Howlin said he would raise the matter with Cabinet colleague, Minister for Children James Reilly, to “ensure that Childline as one of the important helplines, is available”.

Childline’s dilemma was highlighted in recent days by RTÉ broadcaster Ryan Tubridy who called on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to “man up” and help the charity make up the shortfall.

Mr Tubridy is an ambassador for the ISPCC, which oversees the helpline. The issue has also been highlighted by the Irish Examiner in recent days. Childline fundraiser Monica Rowe also wrote to Mr Kenny earlier this week saying the charity had been met with “deafening silence” in its call for extra funding.

The broadcaster said: “That’s where the Taoiseach needs to come in. We don’t see too much of him but it’s time to man up, stand up to this thing and put your hand in your pocket at a governmental level and get these people out of a hole so children aren’t spending the next four or five weeks getting an engaged signal at their end of their phone when they’re in trouble. It’s mildly sickening but with any luck it’ll be sorted,” he said.

The charity has still to receive an answer from Mr Reilly on its call for a meeting over the funding gap. The organisation warns that the estimated 45,000 calls a year Childline responds to at night will go unanswered next year if the funding gap is not addressed.

ISPCC interim chief executive Caroline O’Sullivan said Mr Howlin’s intervention was “

a huge step in the right direction, but we need to meet the department and the minister on this sooner rather than later on this. We do not have a lot of time to save this service and the clock is ticking”.

Responding to a question from Fianna Fáil’s spokesperson on children Robert Troy on Wednesday, the children’s minister said he had asked officials in his department to meet with the ISPCC, along with Tusla, “to examine how best such a service can be provided to the greatest benefit of children”.

Meanwhile, Mr O’Fearghail also called on the Coalition to implement the Istanbul Convention, a new framework for all European governments to prevent and combat violence against women and girls as well as domestic violence.

He raised the plight of Women’s Aid, saying its services had received some 18,000 reports last year but that only 287 arrests were made by gardaí in relation to domestic violence.

The TD also asked whether a woman or child would have to be “brutalised to death” before action is taken.

Mr Howlin also said that he would discuss Ireland’s position on signing up to the protection treaty with Mr Reilly.