Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One question that very few would be brave enough to ask me is how old I am. If you did, however, I would say that I am young enough to be a working mother of two teenage boys and I am committed to public service and was privileged to have been appointed not just as Ireland’s 19th female member of Cabinet but also Ireland’s first female lawyer at Cabinet. However, in terms of this debate, I would say that I am old enough to know that there are very few women my age who have not been subjected to some form of sexual assault in their respective lifetimes. I know this because I am one of them. It will not come as a surprise to those of us of a similar age who have suffered this trauma. Sometimes, we have suffered it more than once. It was, and is, a lot more common than many believe. I always take statistics that I read with a pinch of salt. Most victims do not report their crimes. There are many reasons for this, including shame, a fear of judgement and a desire to forget. It should not be this way. As the Taoiseach said earlier, it is a form of hidden abuse. It is important to state that not all abuse is continuous. There can be isolated incidents that can be just as damaging, either at home or outside the home.

No doubt, for someone watching this contribution live or who will read it later, somewhere near to them at this very moment in time, whether it is in a town, a public space, an office, a street or a home, some form of sexual assault or violation is taking place. The Me Too and Reclaim the Night movement, following the murder of Sarah Everard in London, and the social media support for Sarah Grace after the brutal and savage attack she suffered in Dublin have highlighted even more so how vulnerable we can be as women. The scary part about sexual assault, in particular, is that the perpetrator is not always the random monster in the middle of the night, but often a friend, spouse, acquaintance or someone the person knows. It is a corrosive blight on female safety and morale.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows only too well that many of the 36 women Deputies and 18 Senators may disagree on ideology and policy, but on a completely personal and human level, we all agree on one thing: we are all very much a part of the unfinished democracy that is Ireland when it comes to the representation and treatment of women. How much we decide to share is a purely personal decision, but I know that I am surrounded in this House by remarkable, talented, strong women who are all doing their best to bring about a fairer and more compassionate Ireland, regardless of what challenges we may each have faced.

While I am on the subject, I hope that a full debate will be afforded to Members to discuss the further constitutional reforms that have been proposed by the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality. I await a response from all party leaders on that. Indeed, I await a response from the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, who I know is here in the House today, to my correspondence regarding the establishment of a special Oireachtas committee. I would also be grateful for a response from the Taoiseach in that regard. As a practising family lawyer, I am particularly interested in the progression of the Family Courts Bill, which others have mentioned. I echo that sentiment.

I welcome the work that has been carried out by the Department of Justice, the Minister for Justice, Deputy Humphreys and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, who is present, on the third national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, which will place a priority on prevention and reduction and should hopefully include a national preventative strategy. While we must do everything we can to prevent domestic and sexual violence, we must also be realistic, and acknowledge that new victims will continue to experience violations. Therefore, we must be very aware of the impact that this new strategy will have on both new and existing victims.

I note the public consultation for this eagerly awaited and most important document closed three weeks ago. I hope the Minister will be able to provide further updates on the strategy in due course. Furthermore, I hope we will receive updates from the Department of Justice on the development and delivery of the national survey on the prevalence of sexual violence in Ireland by the Central Statistics Office.

In recent weeks, I have read the stark and alarming figures contained in the annual reports of Women's Aid, FLAC and the many other organisations that play a role in assisting victims of gender-based violence. Since the pandemic first arrived on our shores, all the emerging data and reports from those on the front line have shown a dramatic increase in the many forms of violence against women and children, particularly in the home, a place that is supposed to be a haven, sanctuary and safe space. While most of us have worked hard to ensure Covid-19 was kept out of our houses, for some women and children the real danger was not something found in the air but rather in the home itself. Almost 31,000 people felt the need to reach out to Women's Aid to make a disclosure of abuse. That represents a 43% increase on the rate for 2019. When broken down, the grim reality is crystal clear: a 30% increase in emotional abuse disclosures, a 24% increase in physical abuse and a 41% increase in sexual abuse. What is even more frightening is that these figures account only for incidents that occurred up to December 2020, which was well before we entered the most recent and longest wave of level-5 restrictions.

Shortly before the election of the current Government, I remember stressing at a meeting of the Cabinet the importance of providing additional supports and options for those women and children who were facing the torturous reality of being further trapped with offenders. That is why I welcomed the non-application of the 5 km travel limit to those who were escaping dangerous domestic scenarios and the recently extended partnership of Airbnb and Safe Ireland to provide temporary accommodation to victims of domestic violence. I was glad to have played my part in assisting with this collaboration in its first iteration.

I have always wanted victims of these horrific crimes to know they are a priority of the Government and that support is always available to them. That is not to say that men do not also suffer from sexual assault and violence because they do, and they should be supported wholeheartedly where it occurs, but it is simply a fact that it is a much more prevalent issue for women. The violence emerging now as a dark feature of this pandemic is a mirror and a challenge to our values, resilience and shared humanity.

I raised this topic during the term of the Thirty-second Dáil, when I was a backbencher. I am not sure whether Members are familiar with the Eurythmics song "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty Four)", in which Annie Lennox uses four powerfully tragic lines to encompass perfectly how victims of sexual assault continue to feel:

And so I face the wall

Turn my back against it all

How I wish I'd been unborn

Wish I was unliving here

What some people fail to understand is that the consequences and repercussions of a sexual offence against a victim are multifaceted. The scale of the damage inflicted varies from one victim to the next, depending on the level of depravity.

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