The Women’s Aid helpline answers more than 40 calls every day.

The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Katherine Zappone, is today officially launching the organisation’s 24-hour helpline which it says is offering a lifeline to thousands of women who live under threat of violence.

Women’s Aid started running a helpline 24 hours a day, seven days a week since January. The helpline had previously been manned for just 12 hours a day.

In the first six months of going 24/7, the organisation answered almost 2,000 calls in the ‘out of hours’ night service.

It costs €75,000 to run the line and the organisation is calling on the Government to foot the bill for a vital support for women who live under the threat of violence in their home.

Last week Women’s Aid revealed it has seen a spike in calls since last week’s murder suicide in Cavan and it has also seen an increase of one third in contacts to the website

In 2015, women disclosed 970 occasions when an abusive partner threatened to kill them, their children and their families.

There were 579 additional disclosures of assaults with weapons, threats with weapons and being strangled and smothered.