Ms Caitríona Gleeson:

The committee received the 27 recommendations, but none should be taken in isolation. In terms of the Senator's question on specialised domestic violence courts, we set out to review them and to see what models there were. We discovered that there are multiple models across the world and that in the wrong hands they could be very detrimental to victims but in the right hands they could be very beneficial. In the UK, we spoke to a judge who oversaw one of the specialist domestic violence courts and to a judge who had responsibility for the mandatory training of all magistrates in England and Wales. Both of them were able to highlight the benefits of each of the systems. We either have one or both. The reality is that we have a very small country and a very small court system. We do not want domestic violence to be further ghettoised, but we want to address the fragmentation.

Some of the case studies in our research refer to women who have had 64 appearances in the court system - not in the criminal court system but in the civil one.

There are significant failings in the system. The legislation is not being implemented consistently across the country by the Garda Síochána, the Courts Service and judges. That is one of the problems. A potential solution is the one family one judge model, which we are also discussing. It has major benefits in terms of the perpetrator not being able to what we term "forum shop"; in such instances the perpetrator is given a warning by a judge, but the following week he jumps the list and picks another judge to hear his case. Then 64 case appearances later the victim is still trying to be heard. One of the caveats - this is where the victims' rights directive is critical for many of the recommendations we are making - is that a victim gets stuck with a judge who does not have the expertise. We have seen two such cases, in which this was very detrimental.

On a point of clarification, I will comment on the breakdown of funding for support services and refuges. We represent all services across the country. Refuges provide an extensive range of support services. We need to be careful that when people look at the cost of a refuge, they realise that not only do the refuges around the country provide supports for women in refuge but also the whole range of services provided in the community.