The Government's allocation to voluntary organisations providing marriage counselling services will increase by over a third this year, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs has announced. A £600,000 increase in the grant scheme catering for such organisations will bring the total allocation for the next year to £2.16 million.
The services to benefit from the grant also include child counselling on parental separation as well as bereavement counselling and support.
Mr Dermot Ahern yesterday said marital breakdown and separation were "increasingly a feature of Irish family life". Marriage was "going through a process of change" and "too often couples are pressured by demands of childcare and work and have too little time for themselves and for their wider families". However, he said, "marriage continues to be the expression of commitment to stability, commitment and continuity in their relationship for the vast majority of people in Ireland." The promotion of "continuity and stability in family life" and the prevention of marital breakdown were "primary goals of Government policy".
Most of the 1,200 trained counsellors in the State's 120 marriage-counselling centres work on a voluntary basis, according to Department figures. Accord, the Catholic marriage counselling service, operates at 57 centres.
The 1996 census showed there were more than twice as many separated people as a decade earlier, Mr Ahern said. Some 87,800 people were registered as separated in 1996, compared to 37,200 10 years previously, an increase of 136 per cent.
There were 17,000 marriages in the State last year.
