Funding for DV
Anybody who relies on RTE for its news would be forgiven for believing that DV was purely a one way street that women were the sole victims and that men were solely responsible.

This attitude was maintained through the summer months and again in October-November. Male victims are simply airbrushed out, their existence is denied; instead, men are implicitly depicted as perpetrators. MVI protested to RTE last June about their biased coverage and again in November.

While there are surely many male abusers, it is worth remembering, as was highlighted at Conference 2019, that 58% of DV is reciprocal, it is not a black and white issue as the media constantly make out and the state agencies assert.

We learned some of the latest facts about funding from answers to Parliamentary Questions:

In 2019 Tusla provided funding of €25.3 million and the same in 2020 but this was supplemented by a further €1.2 million due to Covid-19.
It should be remembered that Tusla is not the only state agency providing state funding for DV services. There are others. For instance the Department of Justice provided €1.88 million in 2019. Of this €615,000 went to 28 women’s groups while Men’s Aid got €20,000. The bias of the Department was shown in the allocation of €525,000 to MOVE, the men overcoming violence group. There is no such group for violent women.

Tusla, working with hotels and various non-governmental organisations, sourced an adequate number of additional new spaces to replace the places that had to be closed due to social distancing requirements, the Minister’s statement read.