Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

There are reports that girls in Presentation College Carlow have been told not to wear leggings to school because they are too revealing of their bodies and make teachers uncomfortable. I understand the principal was on the radio this morning to challenge the reports. Clearly, young people, male and female, in the school are very upset and believe that something very wrong happened here. There must be no place for victim blaming or body shaming in our schools and I ask that the Department investigates this matter further.

Women and girls in our society have to put up with crap all their lives. Last week, we saw sexual abuse on a grand scale with the mass sharing of intimate images online without consent. This morning, researchers in Trinity and Maynooth tell us one in five Irish women have experienced rape. Today is the UN's international day for the elimination of violence against women. Globally, each year as many women of reproductive age die from male violence as die from cancer. More suffer ill health as a result of this violence than suffer ill health from all of the traffic accidents and malaria cases in the world combined. The programme for Government describes sexual violence as an epidemic in our society. It has worsened in the Covid era and is now widely described as the shadow pandemic. I put it to the Taoiseach that he is not tackling it in the way he would tackle either an epidemic or a pandemic. With the pandemic the Government put society on a war footing. It organised lockdowns. The message to mask up, socially distance and wash our hands comes at us every day, and rightly so, from radio, television and the press. With the epidemic of sexual violence where are the emergency measures? The Taoiseach will commission a report here and a speech is made there and a few million euro is thrown at the problem from time to time.

Gender-based violence and sexism are systemic issues. To a greater or lesser degree, all of the institutions of the State and others are laced through with sexism. Mass feminist movements from Chile to Spain and from Poland to Peru are putting the system in the dock and pointing the finger at the establishment and the state. These movements offer real hope for the future. Two years ago, eight months after the Belfast rape trial and at the time of the Cork rape trial, my colleague, Ruth Coppinger, held up a thong in the Dáil in protest at a woman's clothing being used as evidence in a rape case. Two years on, I will conclude by asking the following questions. Will the Taoiseach support the establishment of a task force on gender-based violence, staff it with survivors, advocates and women who work in the sector, set aside a very healthy budget and pledge to implement its proposals? When will the Taoiseach act to stop victim blaming in the courts? When will he act to stop rape myths being used in trials? When will consent be made the central issue in rape cases?

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