Ms Mary McDermott:

We have to have something to monitor. The heads of Bill is looking at what we are setting up to monitor. It needs all the powers that Dr. Saidléar has mentioned. Two things seem to be sitting in the room for me. The first is a question about the nature of this agency and what its reach and remit will be. The other issue that is recurring is about the content of the work of the agency. We see this a lot. This goes to issues like diversity and needs analysis. We are very hopeful that we will have a future-facing agency that is not designing what we call the "Stepford Wives" version of what domestic violence is. We want an agency that is future-facing for all the imaginable forms of misogyny and sexism, and how all this violence and abuse is happening now across real and virtual platforms, to all ages, young and old, parents or not. That is where we want to go regarding the content. Safe Ireland's frame of analysis is that sex, gender and sexuality-based coercion and violence is the axis of power for this type of abuse and it needs to be identified as a section in itself in intersectional analysis for a very clear reason. Domestic violence does not sit or map clearly on top of the traditional social exclusion categories. Poverty has a very complex relationship on the list of marginalised groups, yes, but it also affects all other groups. We need analyses and frameworks that match that and we need an agency that can do that. As Ms O'Connor and others have said we need an agency where the members are trained in the nature of domestic violence. We need an agency that is future-facing and has the reach and remit to generate its own policy, and do primary research to generate data that will feed into an evidentiary feedback loop with the services, survivors, families and communities that this affects. In terms of a service development plan, a needs analysis is the first thing I would imagine anyone would do when developing a plan. Unless something completely out of date was going to be implemented that would be normal procedure. We really need the agency to have the power and the reach. All of us here want that.