Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We discussed this Bill during a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice and Equality this week. It is blatantly obvious that this is a massive area with so much at play. There are so many issues to deal with. I looked at the comments from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The commission said that services to victims should not be dependent on the victim making a formal complaint or an offender being prosecuted or convicted. The commission reported that there were 4,831 un-met requests for emergency accommodation for victims in 2016 alone. There is one women's refuge in Wexford with four family bedrooms serving a population of 150,000. The refuge receives on a regular basis women presenting with serious physical injuries resulting from assault along with traumatised children. In 2014, the Wexford refuge turned away 338 women and 259 children. In 2016, it accommodated 35 women and 45 children but turned away 244 women and 353 children. The vast majority of women who contact the women's refuge in Wexford are victims of domestic violence. In other words, they are victims of a crime but support services receive nothing in the way of State support. As the figures show, this refuge is only able to deal with a fraction of the demand placed upon it by the most vulnerable in our society. I have no doubt that it is not just a problem in Wexford. When Wexford Women's Refuge submitted for a second time a comprehensive funding application through the capital assistance scheme to buy a property that would be converted into a facility with 12 self-contained rooms, the application disappeared - vanished off the face of the planet. That is over a year ago and the refuge's application is still in a state of paralysis. That will give you some indication of what we really think of victims of crime in this country.

Another major issue is faced by victims of domestic violence, namely, the interpretation of what constitutes a victim of any crime. The Bill states that a victim is a natural person who has suffered harm, including physical, mental or emotional harm or economic loss which was directly caused by a criminal offence. In respect of harm being directly caused by a criminal offence, is an offence simply the reporting of a crime, does a charge have to be brought in respect of the reporting of a crime or does there have be a conviction in respect of the reporting of a crime? I can understand that it is very hard for the State to record a crime if it is never reported. We have a big challenge then. We need to improve the level of reporting of crime. If you never hear about it, you certainly do not know it happened unless the entire country is bugged.

3 o’clock

Looking at some of the statistics, according to the National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence, less than 25% of women who suffer severely physically abuse report the incident to An Garda Síochána. Twenty-nine per cent of women who have suffered domestic abuse in some form or other report the incident to the Garda. A Cosc study shows 213,000 women have been the victims of domestic abuse in Ireland alone but, based on its own figures, 150,000 of these women did not report the incident to the Garda. These 150,000 women are still victims of crime but, because they did not report the offence to the Garda, they will not be entitled to the supports, services and protection that goes with being a victim. That is 150,000 victims who are not victims. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has recommended expanding the definition of "victim" to ensure that a person may be considered a victim regardless of whether an offender is identified, apprehended, prosecuted or convicted, and that makes sense.

We need to encourage more victims, especially those vulnerable to the risk of repeat and secondary victimisation, to report the crime to the Garda but in order to do so, we also need to build trust in the Garda and transparency in how it operates. The Garda Inspectorate's report showed a massaging downwards of crime figures and a massaging upwards of detection rates. The Garda Commissioner rejected this assertion but it must be wondered how she got away with rejecting the Garda Inspectorate report. The massaging of figures was reconfirmed by both GSOC and the CSO in their respective 2014 reports. The CSO went so far as to suspend publishing of crime statistics for a full year because of the unreliability of the figures. That Commissioner is still in place. Sadly, too many Members in here still seem to think that she is fit for office.

The conclusions of the O'Higgins report reconfirmed serious issues detailed in the Garda Inspectorate report of 2015. These issues include poor investigation techniques and detection rates, the absence of proper record or note taking, the absence of proper supervision and training, the appalling treatment of victims of crime, and the massaging of figures and PULSE records by gardaí. I am painting a sad picture but I am not making it up. It is a difficult situation for so many people. I am sorry, but we will not get people coming forward in a positive healthy fashion without reservation until we have total confidence in the police force. The present Commissioner was prepared at the O'Higgins commission to send her legal team back in with false statements about Sergeant Maurice McCabe with regard to a meeting in Mullingar and was prepared to stand over it. According to the O'Higgins report, this was done in a fairly blatant manner. How, in God's name, will we expect people to come forward in trust with a police force that operates in the manner it does?

Sometimes we expect too much of the police force in general. I like to think that the majority of Members disagreed with closing so many local Garda stations, but I remember when there was a garda in the nearest village to me at home and everyone in the place knew him. If one was robbed, one went to him because we trusted him and we had faith in him. We expected to be served well by him, and we were. It made such a difference knowing the garda. He was part of the community and reporting a crime to him would be as natural as day. Domestic violence is clearly a different area and there were always challenges there. As a State, we have serious problems around openness in many matters around that but the disappearance of the local garda and the local Garda station has not helped. I wish this Government or the next would rethink it. While in the case of some stations it did not make any sense to have them open because there was not enough going on, there are many stations that should be open but which have been closed.

If we are to introduce better measures in this area of helping the victims of crime, we will have to provide more resources to the Garda as well. It is not only about IT. There are extra resources going to them at present but these are generally IT-based. More needs to be done. There are a lot of gardaí interested in doing their job properly irrespective of the fact that the hierarchy is rotten. There are many good gardaí in this country and they are not being well served by the system. They will need more resources if we are to have the sort of police service that we would like.

See this speech in context