Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What I am proposing to do in amending section 40 of the Domestic Violence Act 2018 does exactly what the Deputy is looking to do there in that amendment, namely ensure where a person is in a relationship or has been in a relationship that this would be an aggravating factor. We are doing that through amending the Domestic Violence Act. I returned to the point that I made earlier to Deputy Carroll Mac Neill, which is that this is very much thinking of it as not just a physical act of violence but as a continuation of that type of intimidation and abuse against women, mainly, which we are discussing here. Obviously it works both ways.