Colm O'Gorman Blames Dept of Health for closure

The Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, has rejected any suggestion of incompetence or ill-will by his officials that might have led to the decision of abuse representative group, One in Four, to close down from the end of the month.

One in Four's director, Colm O'Gorman, told a news conference the organisation would cease operating at the end of next month, because of a decision of the Department of Health and Children to renege on a commitment to fund its counselling programme.

On RTÉ Radio, the minister defended the department's funding of groups representing the abused, and said he found it hard to accept that One in Four had to close because of financial problems.

He said there might be problems in relation to the group's counselling role but he and his officials were prepared to meet them to discuss these.

Talks may be held later this week

In a statement earlier, the Dept said it hoped to meet representatives of One in Four this week for talks.

It said it had provided €633,000 funding to the organisation since May of last year, of which €425,000 was for One in Four in Ireland and €208,000 was for its organisation in England.

It also said that counselling is provided through the National Counselling Service, at a cost to the Department of €17million since 1999.