Row over rape centre funding

The Rape Crisis Centre provides a vital service

A row has erupted over a request for funding to offset severe financial difficulties at a rape counselling service in Belfast.

The Rape Crisis Centre has offered free support and counselling to victims of rape and abuse in Northern Ireland since 1982.

However, it has constantly battled to stay open and with staff members not receiving payment for the last two months, urgently needs cash to stay afloat.

The centre said it had made a proper application for grant aid to the Department of Health.

But Health Minister Bairbre de Brun has denied this and accused the centre of failing to meet official accounting standards.

Bairbre de Brun: Centre was given "additional money"

Ms de Brun said the centre had "consistently had difficulties completing the procedures".

"We have given them additional money over and above their grant last year to get a consultant in to do that work to get them over this crisis," she said.

Ms de Brun said that ahead of an assembly debate on the issue on Monday, she had received an e-mailed funding application - 11 months after the period for submitting such forms had opened.

"There is no question of it having arrived earlier," she said.

She also said she had not received a business plan from the centre.

However, the centre's co-director Eileen Calder - who has claimed it is the worst funded unit in Ireland - said Ms de Brun was "twisting the truth" and "hiding behind civil servants".

Eileen Calder: Accused minister of "twisting the truth"

She said the centre had been providing annual reports, audited accounts and monitoring information for the last 20 years.

Ms Calder said the centre had sent an application for funding before Christmas - well ahead of any deadline.

"I am not going to call the department a liar," she said.

"They have in their possession at this time a revised application form asking for what they really need and they have the business plan."

Ms Calder also said that the health minister had in her possession for the last two years, research commissioned by the Irish network of rape crisis centres which clearly sets out what a centre needed.

On Monday, assembly members unanimously supported an Ulster Unionist motion calling for adequate funding to secure the centre's long term future.

Ulster Unionist Esmond Birnie said the department should have told the centre's management it had not received this year's application.

'Boot in'

He described the issue as a "technical distraction, given the crucial point that there has been an obvious under-funding of this very important area of public health for most of the last two decades".

Sinn Fein's John Kelly questioned the methods used by the centre to highlight its funding crisis.

But Ulster Unionist Danny Kennedy accused Mr Kelly of "putting the boot in" to the work of the Rape Crisis Centre.

DUP member William Hay urged the minister to look at the issue of funding for all rape crisis centres throughout the province.

Responding, Ms de Brun insisted she was committed to funding services to help rape victims.