Victim Support to continue despite resignations

Victim Support says it remains "the ideal organisation to provide services for victims of crime" despite the resignation of its founder and chairwoman along with two-thirds of the board.

The group's administrator Ms Anne Mead told ireland.comthat Victim Support was committed to its core ideal of supporting victims of crime and the service would continue as normal despite the resignations.

Last night two thirds of the board - including the group's founder Mr Derek Nally and chairwoman Ms Mairead Fernane - announced their resignation from the organisation with immediate effect.

This follows months of internal dispute over how the organisation should be run. Mr Nally claimed the organisation that is now in place bears little relation to the one he founded in 1985.

He said: "Over the past year this voluntary organisation has devoted too little of its time to the purpose for which it was founded - that is the support of victims of crime."

Ms Fernane said the Victim Support had faced considerable organisational difficulties and while "we have great volunteers working on the ground, referrals have been constantly decreasing since 1999.

She said the Board had informed the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform at two recent meetings that Victim Support was a "dysfunctional" organisation.

"Over the past year it has faced staff and financial difficulties that would require an outside professional consultant to look at," she said.

In 2003 the number of referrals to the group dropped to the 1996 level and figures for the first six months of this years shows a significant fall on last year.

Ms Mead said the fall in referrals was of concern to the organisation and that she had no simple explanation for the decline.

She said the group's work relied on people's willingness to report crime and the central role of the gardai in informing people of the service.

In recent years Victim Support has almost been entirely funded by Department of Justice.

Ms Mead said the Department still saw it as the best organisation to support victims of crime and had assured her that there was no intention to cut funding.

A case for constructive dismissal taken by the former chief executive of Victim Support, Ms Lillian McGovern, against the organisation was recently postponed until October.

Details of Ms McGovern's complaint have not been disclosed; however, her representative, Ms Mary Irvine SC, said they covered a four-year period, focusing particularly on nine months.