Ms Sarah Benson:

I will add to Ms Blackwell's previous contribution around schools. We also have been inundated by schools and we made a conscious decision not to be the ones who go in, do a talk, and then the talk is done. We have linked up with University College Cork, which has been doing the third level bystander programme and is now piloting it in 70 schools. It is only a pilot that started with seven schools but after Ashling Murphy's death, it increased to 70 schools. We have woven in our material in to Munster Technological University with the object of ensuring the context of intimate relationships, as well as the broader issues around consent are included. We are very interested to see how that progresses. That trains the teachers to work with the young people. It is also supporting the teachers. It is sober work but it is the work that is important to ensure culture and an integrated feed-in of these issues because that is required. Excellent short-term training does not actually help if the culture of the school is not there to support disclosures and the young people to struggle with the concepts.

As regards the questions of Deputy Bríd Smith, I will start with the strategy itself. The fact is that victims, particularly women and children, and their experience of homelessness, which is connected directly and, in many cases, inextricably with domestic violence, have never been given proper visibility in the housing strategy, even in terms of counting the housing and homeless numbers. Refuges have been siloed off as something separate and different. That is a fatal flaw in terms of responding responsively and in a gender-informed way to homelessness. This encompasses women who are homeless for other reasons. Trinity College Dublin has conducted several research projects that show domestic and sexual violence in childhood, as a young adult or in intimate relationships as being a factor in homelessness. Homeless provision is overwhelmingly geared towards couples and men. There is almost no women-only homeless accommodation. Domestic violence can occur in homeless accommodation. We are working with several services in respect of how they tackle that issue of domestic violence in homeless services they are providing. Where do women go if they are homeless and need to be separate with their children? In the context of prescription in respect of local authority areas, where is it recognised that women who want to leave their abusive partners may specifically need to leave their local authority area? That needs to be given visibility. An influence that is sensitive to gender as well as domestic and sexual violence is needed and will require different thinking and different prioritisations. It is about naming it, giving it visibility and seeing where that leads in the strategy.

As regards safe home initiatives, several of our colleagues in the sector have initiated what are referred to as safe home initiatives and they are crucial. Why should victims or survivors have to be the ones to vacate when they are not the cause of the problem? That is recognised in the Tusla accommodation survey. It is not just about refuge spaces; it is about all of the multifaceted approaches and facilitating those as part of the new strategy and the implementation we think will be vital to ensure that will happen. Our colleagues in Safe Ireland will speak to that in more depth next week.