The Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, will meet representatives of the One in Four group tomorrow to discuss its funding crisis.
On Monday the group, which supports people who were sexually abused as children, announced that it would close its offices at the end of October and that staff were given redundancy notice last Thursday because of a funding dispute with the Department.
In a brief statement last night One in Four confirmed it had been contacted by the Minister to arrange a meeting and it would take place tomorrow. It said the central issue remained "the failure of the Department of Health and Children to sign an appropriate agreement with the organisation that would allow us to continue to operate and develop our services".
Speaking to The Irish Times at the publication of the Cancer in Ireland report in Dublin yesterday, Mr Martin pointed out that the Department had provided the group with "about €633,000 which is a significant amount in just a short 17 months".
He felt they would "have to discuss a framework by which ongoing support is provided. I mean by any standards the scale of the allocation this year is quite substantive".
He had met Mr Colm O'Gorman, director of One in Four, last March and had "agreed the outlines of a framework going forward. The Department have one perspective on that, and Colm O'Gorman would have a different perspective."
Mr Martin said a national counselling service had been established which to date had cost about €17 million. Asked whether he would like to see One in Four continue he said: "Well, yes, of course. We have put a lot of money into it already so we were surprised, I was very surprised, to hear that it was on the brink of collapse."