Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her opening remarks. I noticed she mentioned the Still Here campaign. I will briefly say that the issue the Minister needs to deal with is still here. She needs to come in here and answer questions on how judicial appointments happen and what that process is. I am referring to the process she handles rather than the Judicial Appointments Advisory Board, JAAB, process. I invite her again to come into the Chamber at the earliest opportunity to answer questions and engage with the Oireachtas on what happened.

I will move on. The issues before us are very serious and the problems throughout the country at the moment with respect to domestic violence and people living in fear is something all of us are aware of. Over the years, most of us in political life will have dealt with many people, unfortunately mainly women, who have been victims of domestic violence and indeed sexually-based violence. Many of them are very fearful and usually one finds that they only come forward after years of suffering that abuse, neglect and coercion. We need to create a society where it is unacceptable for that to happen and where it is normal for people to come forward on the first occasion it happens, not on the 100th or 200th occasion. To do that, we have to ensure there are adequate resources in place that give people the confidence that they will be believed, the confidence that there will be action as a result of coming forward and the confidence that there are services in place for them. One of the obvious services is, of course, the shelters women often have to go to. In many areas of the country, and certainly in my own region, there is always a shortage. I saw a recent report which I think stated that throughout the country there are nine women and children being turned away per day due to the absence of space in shelters or something of that nature. That is something that needs to be addressed by the Oireachtas because we cannot continually leave these situations to charity. That is what often happens, in that we must depend on charitable donations to various organisations in order to put measures like that in place. This should be something the State is providing to people as a right.

I raise also an issue the Minister is aware of, namely, the ruling on the use of mobile phone records as evidence in cases. The Government has failed so far to introduce any legislation in regard to data retention to comply with the 2014 ruling of the European Court of Justice on data retention. That is something that needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible because we all know of a sexually-based violence case where there is a conviction on the line at the moment because we have not dealt with this. This has been going on for six years so I invite the Minister to enlighten us on what plans the Government has to deal with that and to put something in place to ensure that the Digital Rights Ireland ruling is complied with in this jurisdiction.

The Still Here campaign and all the work that has been done around that is very welcome and is a move in the right direction but, as I said, we still have such a distance to go. I think it was last week that we had a report which stated there were a number of cases where people came forward but did not want to proceed and progress the cases any further. The reason they did not want to progress them any further was that they have seen all the data which shows that few cases are reported and that few cases are actually successful and go the full route. That is why people do not have confidence. We have to put the effort in to ensure we deliver for people. One of the key things is that the first engagement people suffering domestic violence often have is with a member of An Garda Síochána. In many cases the gardaí are excellent and do a great job but there are cases where they are not. Adequate training, not just for gardaí who specifically deal with this issue but for all Garda members, is one of the things that needs to happen as quickly as possible. The State has huge responsibilities around all this. Unfortunately the experience is that so many people have felt let down at the end of it all.

I noted that in the Minister's opening remarks she spoke about working with all the other agencies, voluntary groups, community organisations and so on. Many of those agencies do not have the staff or the resources. One of the first things a woman has to do is to try to find a new place to live. Very often they go to the local authority and the first obstacle they come up against is trying to get on the housing list. When they get on the list, knowing that there is no house available, they are told to go through the housing assistance payment, HAP, process to try to find rented accommodation. Sometimes the rented accommodation they find is not safe for them to go to. There needs to be a dedicated person in each local authority to deal with people who are in those circumstances. There are dedicated people in each local authority to deal with Travellers, for instance; it should be the same for dealing with people who are victims of domestic or sexually-based violence to ensure they get access where they need it. The first thing they need is a house, a place to live.

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