Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I know Deputy Cronin has always spoken of the position of women in the social revolution. The two big social revolutions that have taken place in my lifetime are marriage equality and the repeal of the eighth amendment, and the role of women was key in both, both for the national campaigns and on the ground at people's doors, as I know from my own constituency. I cite those two because they are examples of where social revolution was achieved. There was almost unanimity across the political spectrum for marriage equality and a significant majority supported repealing the eighth amendment, although I know there was not unanimity. That is important with regard to delivering on the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly. We have seen pushback in certain parts of society on issues of equality and of recognition of families outside of marriage. I fear that we could have an extremely divisive campaign where we would end up with political parties elevating the issue into part of the wider political discourse. We have to avoid that. That is why this committee will be so important and why I want to work with it to seek agreement on the wording, rather than letting it become divisive and flow into the wider tit-for-tat we see in the Chamber most days. This is too important to risk being lost by being treated as normal politics.

There is a strong commitment across Government to not have a back to normal approach to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We will have a major chance. That is why we are seeing responsibility for services going out of my Department. I regret that, because I was passionate about it and delivered a significant increase in funding for Tusla in the last two budgets for domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services. I also recognise that there is a strong belief, particularly in the NGO sector, that it is better that everything is brought together under one Department, and particularly under the one agency that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, is about to establish. I believe that one agency that deals with the policies and also with the day-to-day implementation and service provision for victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is the way forward.

The Minister for Justice will address sentencing as part of the third national strategy. We now have a Judicial Council, which issues guidelines. That has to be linked with the training that the Citizens' Assembly recommended. I do not agree with mandatory sentencing. I think there is a risk with that in all aspects of life. I agree with the Deputy that there are cases where one might ask, "Really?" I feel that too. Without knowing the details of the case-----