Ms Collette O'Regan:

I thank the Senator. We cannot overestimate the importance of training or the lack of training across many of our core systems and the legal system in particular. We would love it if some of our community could take some of what is happening to them to court, but they do not get that far. They do not even get to engage with the Garda. I am thinking in particular about gay men of a certain age or even butch-presenting lesbians and trans people. They will just avoid at all costs reporting what is happening to them for fear of being disrespected when they are feeling most vulnerable. It is almost like a re-traumatising, which I know often happens to other vulnerable victims of crime. Even thinking about reporting and going into a Garda station not knowing who you will meet or how they will treat you is a massive barrier. People have a store of research evidence and a lot of anecdotal evidence of negative experiences in that regard. There is a need for training. We are doing training with the Garda and it is only reinforcing my belief that so much training needs to happen. I refer to the remarks of Dr. Mbugua in respect of unconscious bias. Most people who are not living the daily life of the minority identity really do not have a felt sense of what the issues are. That is the reality. It is not their fault. How would they know? They need to be trained to know because they have a duty of care and we are finding it very hard to experience that duty of care in a positive way at the moment.