Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

After ten years of this Government, waiting has become a legacy. It is what we do. Every day people are forced to wait in traffic, children wait for months to see an orthodontist, patients wait for years to see a neurologist and people wait for up to a decade to receive a house from a local authority. Today, like every other day, 274 men and women wait on trolleys in units throughout the country. Every day, in every public service we try to use, waiting has become a national pastime. It is the legacy of the past ten years.

I want the Taoiseach to imagine a different kind of waiting. I want him to imagine the plight of a woman who has been sexually abused or raped in this city on a Friday night. Her first instinct is to scrub herself clean but she cannot do that. She too has to wait. She has to wait in those clothes, not for hours but for days, for the simple reason that the Government has provided inadequate resources and there is no doctor on duty in the Rotunda assessment unit. That woman, who has been sexually abused or raped, will wait on Friday evening, all day Saturday and all Saturday night. She cannot have a shower and is unable to feel clean again simply because to do so would destroy the evidence which nobody is able to take up because there is no doctor on duty until Sunday evening.

This happens not only in Dublin. Recently, two women who were sexually abused and assaulted had to travel to be treated in Dublin because no facilities were available locally. There are times in Cork when women who have been raped or sexually assaulted must travel to Waterford for treatment.

Women wait and suffer while the rapists go on about their lives. This happens because there are insufficient gardaí and because assault unit staff are not present to collect evidence when they should be. These women, having been raped or assaulted, must wait for lengthy periods in the clothes they wore when the assault occurred because we do not have doctors on duty and insufficient staff are available to take evidence when necessary.

The cost of sorting out this problem is a mere €3 million. I ask the Taoiseach, as the leader of the country and the Head of Government, in these days of protest about violence against women, whether the time has come to treat this matter with political will and as a political priority. Will the Taoiseach allocate €3 million to sort out this problem and not have women who have been raped or sexually abused waiting, weekend after weekend, in the same clothes for days on end because no doctor is available and no one is available to take the evidence, which would be destroyed if they showered and cleaned themselves off as they want to do?

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