Dr. Róisín O'Shea:

I am glad the Deputy raised this, because it is something about which I feel very strongly. In the pilot project we are carrying out in the south of the city, we are mediating domestic violence. I will tell the committee why. If we do not mediate domestic violence issues, we are saying that the alleged victim cannot choose to use mediation. Moreover, the rest of the victim's life continues. Access, maintenance and the rest of his or her life continue even when there is domestic violence. I took my lead from a judge in Canada, Justice Geraldine Waldman, who set up a trial court in which the first part of the case involved hearing the criminal allegations of domestic violence. In the second part of the case, the court heard evidence on the other issues to do with the family in question. In other words, the first part concerned whether an assault or psychological violence took place. Then the judge took off her gown and heard the second piece, which concerned maintenance or parenting issues.

I was in court on Monday watching cases in Dolphin House. I took note of what one of the judges said to me, or rather to the litigants - because I am listening I always think I am being spoken to. The father was 21 and the mother was 19. The mother said that the father should not see the child because he was a criminal. The judge asked the father questions and discovered that he had been in trouble when he was a young lad, as well as being in trouble now. The judge said that the father having a criminal record or facing criminal sanction did not mean he stopped being a father or stopped seeing his child. It is our job to figure out the circumstances that led to an allegation of domestic violence.

I want to be clear on one aspect of the Act. As one of the relevant stakeholders with respect to the legislation, I fought on this issue but I was not heard. I wear two hats in that I have my private practice and I carry out research. My colleague, Dr. Sinéad Conneely, and I pointed out that section 3 excludes the application of the Act to mediation where domestic violence has taken place. That is what it does. It does not say that one cannot mediate where there is domestic violence. It says the Act will not apply to mediation. I had a conversation with the President of the District Court, Judge Rosemary Horgan, in a meeting with five judges and we spoke about this. I gave my view and they appeared to agree with me. The first findings of our research project that I will release will be on domestic violence. We will release the findings in May. We will look at allegations of domestic violence, how many of them exist, what is the evidence and what is the nature of them. In Canada, domestic violence is broken up into 12 different categories. We are doing this umbrella domestic violence piece. Physical violence is fairly rare. I worry that those who are genuinely suffering domestic violence are not coming into our courts. We then have all the permutations of the break-up of a relationship such as arguing and fighting. That is coming in as domestic violence when it is something different. It can turn into domestic violence but, initially, it may not be that. I was shocked to find that almost 16% of the domestic violence cases involve parents in their 50s and 60s seeking an order to put a son or daughter out of the house, particularly in Dublin, because he or she is assaulting them. Drugs and alcohol are the two significant issues that are not dealt with by the courts.