Vol. 495 No. 4
68 Mr. S. Ryan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the services his Department provides to victims of crime; the plans, if any, he has to extend the court victim and witness scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20262/98]
My commitment to address the needs of victims of crime is a matter of record. In line with this commitment I have allocated funding to the organisation Victim Support in the current year totalling £645,000, an increase of over 100 per cent on the 1997 allocation.
This orginisation provides a wide range of services to victims of crime. These include a home visiting service which is operated in conjunction with the Garda and provides counselling, advice and support for victims at their homes. The organisation also operates a service for tourists who fall victim to crime while visiting this country. A new scheme which has been recently introduced on a pilot basis is the hospital project through which it is intended to offer emotional support to victims who may be hospitalised as a result of crime. A 24 hour telephone helpline which provides advice, support and a referral service is also available to all victims.
Victim Support also provides a specialist service for the families of homicide victims. This service which is available nationally is operated by a corps of specially trained volunteers and is aimed at providing emotional support and practical assistance and advice to families and relatives of the deceased person.
As part of the ongoing courts building programme, it is now the policy of my Department to provide dedicated facilities in all new or renovated court buildings for victims of crime where they can await their cases in privacy and some degree of comfort. For example, such accommodation has recently been provided in the new courthouses at Tallaght, the Richmond courthouse and Carrick-on-Shannon and at Naas courthouse, which was refurbished recently. The video link system which enables persons under 17 years of age to give evidence and be cross-examined in trials of sexual offences or offences involving violence from a location outside of the courtroom, has now been in operation since 1994 at the Four Courts, Dublin. There are plans in hand at present to add a second system at the Four Courts and to install a system at a venue outside Dublin.
