Ms Monica Mazzone:

Initially, they might possibly require an increase. The idea of the Swedish model is to decrease the demand in the long term. If there is less of this happening, therefore, less policing would be required. In Sweden, for example, the opinion that this is wrong has changed quite dramatically in the last few years. If there is less demand, it might not be necessary to have the same resources in terms of policing and one could concentrate those resources on certain points. However, initially there might be a demand for increasing resources. As regards resources for supporting the women, Ms O'Connor's research refers to 1,000 women in Ireland. While the numbers are huge in the sense of the harm being done, they are not huge in terms of the resources we should be able to provide. While we are in a recession and need to examine resources, ultimately this is about a principled stance and we need to look beyond the resource basis.