Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join the Chairman in welcoming Ms McManus and her colleagues and thank them for their presentation. In her introductory remarks Ms McManus mentioned the mass rape in Syria. We have had presentations to the committee and elsewhere in the Oireachtas on that. Mass rape as a weapon of war in Syria is frightening, and the situation pertaining there is desperate.

With regard to Northern Ireland, some months ago I had correspondence from a number of women's groups and I arranged for the Foyle women's group to make a presentation at the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Deputy Crowe and some of our other colleagues may have been present at that meeting. The picture they painted for us was a very difficult one in terms of the desperate situation confronting many individuals and families, particularly women. It will be unfortunate if the Six Counties, Northern Ireland, again becomes a no-man's-land that does not come under any country's Resolution 1325 policy.

Ms McManus will recall that for the best part of 20 years when policy was being developed and issues addressed regarding the North of Ireland there were common chapters in some policy documents. There might be some way of having a common chapter in the British Resolution 1325 policy, and in the Irish one, but under no circumstances should Northern Ireland be left out. Unfortunately, there are many difficulties in Northern Ireland. Some of it may be confined to areas of huge disadvantage, particularly in the loyalist communities and also in some of the Nationalist communities. It is an area in which any policy initiative that can be taken should be taken. I hope Ms McManus might be able to address it from the point of view of ensuring, as she mentioned earlier, that it will not be ignored because the presentations were made to us, and correspondence I have from individuals and groups painted anything but a rosy picture for some communities and families, and women in particular.

With regard to-----