Ms Nora Owen:

I thank Deputy Brady for raising a number of issues. He began by raising the 29,770 cases that were announced today of people who reported domestic violence. Earlier, we spoke about the role the gardaí have in this and the tensions that have arisen in people’s households during the Covid pandemic. In a way, it is a lesson to us all to be aware that this is going on inside houses and homes all around us. It does not affect just one particular section of society - it is throughout society. We must be very conscious of that.

I know that Deputy Brady has a particular interest in the situation in Mali and in the wider Sahel region, which covers Burkina Faso and Niger. That area is extremely complex and challenging. Mali is the epicentre of that area. There are significant levels of violence from armed terrorist groups and intercommunal groups, and the insecurity for women and girls has been devastating. As Deputy Brady probably knows, the social norms and multiple discriminations based on age have been exacerbated by what is going on. Women and girls have been exposed to widespread fears of abduction. They have been married by force to soldiers. They have been sexually assaulted and raped.

With Covid and the complexity of the violence, many schools there have remained closed. That meant that the children, young girls and boys, were all around. They were losing their chance of an education and would never get it back again as all the schools were shut. The efforts of the UN peacekeeping forces that are there, while they are doing what they can, sadly we have not seen any significant lessening of that violence in Mali. We have made various statements on it and we have highlighted at the UN Security Council the role of the UN forces there and seeking a meaningful implementation. As Deputy Brady said, there needs to be more women involved in the peace agreement. A peace agreement made in a room full of men discussing it, leaves out a whole part of the agenda of solving those conflicts. Our efforts, whenever we talk to the Department of Foreign of Affairs and the Department of Defence, are to make sure that women are involved in those discussions, otherwise the issues of women and girls will disappear.

The genocide of the Yazidi people – I must be frank with the Deputy – is not an area our groups have been involved in. It is moreso the Department of Foreign Affairs that has been handling that. I cannot answer questions on that, but he did raise the issue of the refugee camps in Lesbos and elsewhere. Many efforts have been made to try to improve those camps and to make them more gender friendly. I heard, from UNICEF and others, some very sad stories of difficulties particularly for women and children leaving their little tents, or wherever they were sleeping, to use the latrines or bathrooms and being in danger of being raped on the way there. Babies were being kept in cages so that they would not be attacked. There have been some very serious stories coming out of those camps and we must be conscious of that. Some European member countries are running or are involved in some of these camps and they must be assisted as much as possible.

The area of mother and baby homes is not one in which we are involved. Therefore, I cannot make a comment on that. It is probably the area of another committee, such as a justice or health committee.

Deputy Brady raised the Defence Forces and why there are not more women in it. There is a working group to advise Mark Mellett, the head of the Defence Forces, on how to make the Defence Forces more gender friendly and to encourage more women to stay in it. For the members who are new to the Oireachtas, I remember that back in the 1980s there were very few women in the Irish Army and one of the reasons given at the time was because the army camps did not have any female toilets. That was given as, what seemed like, a genuine excuse as to why women were not able to come it. Of course, that was changed and corrected, and more women have joined the Army, but they account for only 7% of the total numbers. There are approximately 8,000 members of the Defence Forces and only 7% are women. Therefore, we need to improve that.

They are particularly useful in UN peacekeeping exercises where a lot of the issues are gender-based. Women will not exchange information with a whole panel of men, but they will if they get a chance to talk to women peacekeepers. This is, therefore, a crucial part of it. I ask Ms Synnott if there is anything else that she wanted to add. I clarify for the committee that members of the Defence Forces and An Garda Síochána cannot criticise or make comments on Government policy. I would not, therefore, expect Ms Synnott to be able to say what the Government should be doing. However, is there anything else that she wants to add on the human trafficking situation? I will then come back to the issue that the Chair raised about us losing our good reputation at UN level.