Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for their contributions and for coming before us today. I have met some of them previously. One issue I raised with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth previously concerned assaults against children. What are the witnesses' thoughts on that? When we look at recommendation 37, we see that it talks about gender-based violence but it also talks about violence in general so we must take that into consideration in our recommendations and the work in their organisations? I know the Minister is to come back to us regarding ongoing work in his Department.

The other issue I wish to raise concerns the joint policing committee for Galway. Rape and sexual assaults were the offences that increased the most during lockdown. They went up by 100% during that period. Are we left with a legacy from Covid or has it just expanded our knowledge base concerning what is happening in people's homes? From speaking to those impacted and relevant services in my constituency, I know that by the time it gets to somebody making a call to the police, it has been happening for a really long time and people were alone within their own homes so I can only imagine what led up to that. Is there an added legacy from Covid?

The work we must do involves making quite firm recommendations and asking really serious and important questions about what is happening within Departments. What other models around the globe could we look at and incorporate here? We could often look at what has not happened and what the numbers are like but we must look at what the best model is and incorporate it into what is being done in Ireland.