Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday the National Women's Council of Ireland raised very serious concerns in response to a report demonstrating that An Garda Síochána had been overstating the number of sexual offences reported by 26% in 2003 and by 6% overall for the 14 years up to 2016. The National Women's Council of Ireland described the system-wide shortfall of data collection and analysis by State services which interact with victims of domestic and sexual violence as "at crisis point". I put it to the Taoiseach that his Government is simply not delivering on the ambitious policies, legislation and resources necessary to tackle head-on the prevalence of domestic and sexual violence in Ireland. Has the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland, SAVI, 2 scoping group submitted a report to the justice Minister? Will the commissioned report include a review of domestic and sexual violence-related data collection and the analysis by State agencies, information technology infrastructure and cross-agency data management? Will the Government act on the recommendation of Women's Aid to introduce a "no contact until contact is safe" rule for access arrangements in the case of domestic violence?

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