Ms Layla de Cogan Chin:

I thank everyone for their contributions. It has been incredibly enlightening. A number of people mentioned the importance of bringing in sectoral expertise and we agree with that. We will give it very careful consideration. I know the Minister is absolutely committed to the principle of codesign. The functions of the agency resulted from a codesign process. The Minister envisages that the agency will have a very strong collaborative relationship with the DSGBV sector in fulfilling its functions. Obviously we need that level of expertise across the various elements of the sector to make the agency work. Deputy Daly and a few others mentioned data gathering and we know the importance of that also. We know that we need the information in the form of aggregated data. That is why there is a dedicated research function envisaged for the agency because we need a strong evidence base for any policy making, or decision making so that is reflected in the scheme and it is something we take very seriously.

A number of people mentioned violence prevention and it was in a couple of the submissions as well. The awareness raising function in the agency will play a part in this regard. Quite a lot of work has been done on that already and it has been quite successful. We need to grow it but obviously violence prevention goes beyond awareness raising. The third national strategy prioritises prevention and reduction of the incidence of DSGBV.

The third national strategy prioritises prevention and reduction of the incidence of domestic, sexual and gender based violence so we are open to consideration and working with parliamentary counsel to see how we can better reflect that prevention element in the wording of the legislation.

Yes, we also want the agency to be future-facing. That was a nice way of putting it. We are also keen to make sure that the agency has the mandate it needs, not only to deal with the issues we have at present but also emerging problems which we cannot see around corners. As the Senator mentioned, who would have thought 20 years from his report that the situation is worse? Things develop. We need the agency not to be limited in its mandate or its funding capacity. We need it to be able to deal with emerging issues.

We have heard the committee and will take what it has said very seriously. We will consider it all. We are very grateful for the opportunity to hear all the different perspectives and we are very much looking forward to the report of the committee. If the committee needs to clarify any points, we are happy to respond in writing if it helps it in the compiling of its report.