Chai Brady
A government move that could see publicly-funded Catholic counselling agencies closing has been described as “an attack on the independence of civil society”.
Currently the Department of Children and Youth Affairs pays almost €1.6 million per year to Accord, the marriage and relationship counselling service run by the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, via Tusla – the Child and Family Agency.
Tusla, however, have created a new service-level agreement for 2018 which requires any agency funded by them to agree to non-discriminatory policies. These policies forbid discrimination on several grounds including sexual orientation. The new service-level agreement has been sent to all of the Tusla-funded agencies.
A spokesperson from the Iona Institute, which promotes the place of marriage and religion in society, said the move was “entirely predictable”, and similar to how when same-sex marriage was introduced in Britain many Catholic adoption agencies had to close because they lost public funding.
“This move will affect all Christian marriage organisations in receipt of public funds. If Accord is forced to close, it could easily mean thousands of couples each year will no longer receive marriage counselling,” said the spokesperson.
“The move is also an attack on the independence of civil society and in this case, freedom of religion. It means that once you receive public funds you also lose your right to have a view on anything that is different from the State view.”
Previous funding cuts caused over a 40% reduction in government grants given to the Church-run marriage counselling agency three years ago.
Despite this, Accord still receive the largest grant from the State compared to other counselling services. In 2016 it received €1,593,000, and its 55 centres nationwide provided 30,666 counselling hours, counselling 5,523 couples, with 17,108 people availing of Accord’s services over the year.
The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference did not respond to requests for a comment before print deadline.