Refuge to close as red tape denies vital funds

A refuge for women and children escaping domestic violence has to close for lack of funds because the State does not classify it as emergency accommodation.

The Cuan Álainn refuge in Tallaght, Dublin, has not taken any new referrals since Monday and the nine families staying there will have to be moved out over the next 10 weeks.

The refuge was built by the Respond housing charity which believed the State would take over funding the facility as it does other domestic violence refuges.

However, three years on, after repeated pleas to Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, the Department of the Environment, and the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, no funding has been provided.

Respond chief executive Ned Brennan said the closure decision was regrettable but that the €350,000 annual running cost was not sustainable. “We cannot continue to fully subvent this service, 100% from our own resources, without any State assistance,” he said.

Cuan Álainn was built as a step-down facility for women and children leaving other refuges but who could not return to their home and needed extra time to source alternative long-term accommodation. It offered a six-month breathing space for families to make those arrangements.

That means it is not classified as an emergency refuge — the excuse used by Tusla — but Mr Brennan said it did take in emergency cases.

“When Rathmines, Bray, and Saoirse [the other Tallaght refuge] are full, the first people they call is us,” said Mr Brennan. “We also take referrals from the gardaí, the HSE, South Dublin County Council, and all the cases they approach us about are emergencies.”

Mr Brennan said that even when Cuan Álainn was just a stepdown facility, it was an essential component of the emergency shelter network as it freed up spaces in other refuges and enabled them to provide emergency services.

Sharon O’Halloran, chief executive of Safe Ireland, the representative body for refuges, said the lack of step-down refuges like Cuan Álainn meant other refuges were having to turn away emergency cases.

“We know a refuge where a woman has been in ‘emergency’ shelter for 14 months,” she said. “She’s given birth to her baby there. It’s the only home she has but a refuge is meant to be short-term solution. We can’t stand over the closure of Cuan Álainn. We’re calling on Tusla to provide the funding.”

In a statement, Tusla said: “Tusla has responsibility for the provision of emergency service responses to victims of domestic violence. It [Cuan Álainn] does not operate as a frontline emergency domestic violence service.”

While it “endorsed” Cuan Álainn, it said: “There is no funding available in the Tusla 2015 budget to allocate to this service”.

Mr Brennan described the response as “disingenuous” and appealed for a change of heart.

“When a woman can’t go home because of domestic violence and has nowhere else to live, that’s an emergency so we provide an emergency service,” said Mr Brennan. “They’re splitting hairs.”