Ms Christina Sherlock:

Yes. I was going to add to what my colleagues have said both in their recent responses and previously. Thinking about people being subjected to domestic violence and abuse, the systems and the journeys they have to take to try to become safe and free of the abuse and to overcome all the other issues that arise once they may even have left an abusive relationship, that does not mean that the abuse ends and that they are totally free from the impact of it. Thinking about the need for housing, welfare and a statutory maintenance agency, a proper response from the courts, the Garda, the health service and Tusla is needed. Thinking about all those people who need to be around the table to respond properly to this issue, we believe that locating that issue within a single Ministry, or indeed having a Minister with responsibility for it, will bring about the leadership and drive needed to create a proper, co-ordinated and effective response. At the moment everything is siloed and you do not get a proper response. As for agencies such as ours that provide front-line services but also try to effect system change, from the problems we are hearing on the ground from callers and people using our face-to-face services, we often find ourselves going to each of those places to try to improve responses from the ground up. Sometimes you can be doing that for a very long time. It would be fair to say that change comes slow in this country. We have been doing that for a very long time. We need something radical, and this is a radical but a very well thought-out suggestion. I just hope that the couple of processes that are in train, with the third national strategy on gender-based violence due in the new year, the audit of responses that has been published already and the accommodation review, we are in a position where real change can happen.