Dr. Sharon Lambert:

Gender-based violence does not have the patterns that exist in other types of violence. Gender-based violence occurs in many different types of homes. When we look at the street level violence the Senator is talking about, we can often see that there are patterns. For example, age and socioeconomic patterns exist. Those patterns do not exist in the context of gender-based violence. It can be anybody in any home, anywhere in the country, irrespective of the resources they have. Therefore, it is different. It is about attitudes towards women and about power and control. The socialisation piece I spoke about earlier does not help that. Gender-based violence almost always occurs within the context of an intimate relationship. Somebody who is supposed to care about you and love you hurts you. The types of street level violence that occur tend to be quite spontaneous. It is spur of the moment stuff. It sometimes may seem planned but it is frequently on the spot, with people who have few internal and external resources. By internal resources, I mean the ability to regulate their emotions. Perpetrators of gender-based violence are often perceived outside of the home as being respectable individuals. They have the ability to control those emotions in different contexts, whereas young people who are experiencing multiple stressors can misbehave in various settings and look problematic much of the time, which is why they are then excluded from the things that would keep them safe, such as education and employment.

I do not know the statistics on knife crime in Ireland. Over the past ten years, however, I have regularly heard people stating that crime is out of control. It is when they do so that I look at the statistics. Regarding youth crime, for example, in the last report that came out from the Garda youth justice section, crime among young people was down in every category except sexual offending, which was the only category in which it had increased. It is back to the perception of crime. Sometimes we perceive that there is more of it than there actually is. Those young people the Senator is talking about are much more likely to be victims of crime. They may have been victims of crime five times before they became perpetrators.

Deputies Guirke and Daly referred to people feeling safe. I understand that, and I know why it is important. However, it is effectively meaningless if we do not have two streams happening at the same time. That is the problem. What we do quite frequently when there is an issue is we go to the one that will make people feel better straight away, and we sometimes perhaps neglect those longer term investments that will ultimately make the difference.