Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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The two amendments tabled by Deputy Wallace and I try to do the same thing. They attempt to provide a remedy for women in situations where they need an emergency barring order in the evening or late at night when the courts are closed. Obviously, we can envisage such scenarios and we want to avoid a situation where somebody could effectively be driven out of their home in the middle of the night and have no recourse and nowhere to go. This was discussed at length in the Seanad, and the Government said it would look at it again. The Minister's proposal is the Government's re-examination of the matter, and I welcome that there has been some movement on it. By deleting the section, the Minister's proposal provides for special sittings of the District Court to issue emergency or interim barring orders after hours. We welcome that. The point we are trying to highlight, however, is that there are practical problems associated with that.

Firstly, there is the issue of cost. There is a call-out charge payable to judges on each occasion where there is an out-of-hours hearing, and obviously there are costs related to opening the court, staffing it, closing it afterwards, etc. Having consulted with members of domestic violence support services, the opinion of SAFE Ireland is that actually these hearings are rarely convened, for whatever reason. I suppose it is speculating that it is for reason of cost. Why is it that these hearings are rarely convened or rarely happen?

Other practical issues arise around a woman's ability to make her way to an emergency court sitting in the middle of the night when she lacks child care and so on. I appreciate the Government is trying to address these problems. I am not sure that our answer is the right one either. However, these issues need to be looked at. We have obligations under the Istanbul Convention.

The worry is that the Government's proposal might make it appear that there is a provision for out-of-hours emergency barring orders, but the practical reality would be that they would be out of reach to women. Our amendments allow for a garda to make application for an order by telephone in an emergency situation. The woman can then appear and swear an affidavit the next day and the issue can be dealt with that way. I do not think it is a brilliant solution, but it is an attempt to overcome that problem.