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

I and every Member of this House received email correspondence regarding this Bill from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Many points were made in that email but there are two points to which they asked us to pay particular attention. The first is that a victim support-advocacy voice should be specifically named in the legislation, and we support that. Second, they emphasised the view that the arrangements will not work unless adequately resourced, which is a key point. We have domestic violence centres in this State where Trojan work is done but they are nowhere near adequately resourced. Rape crisis centres are nowhere near adequately resourced. It is the same with mental health counselling facilities. Anti-sexual violence education programmes, including programmes for sex offenders, are inadequately resourced. In the budget that the Government brought forward last month, €20 million was set aside for domestic violence support services and €5 million for sexual violence prevention and protection, a total of €25 million, and the same budget provided €17 million for the greyhound industry. It is unreal.

The Bill proposes to give new powers to the police. In discussing those proposals, it cannot go without comment that we are talking about resources for a Garda force that ignored thousands of 999 calls, which ignored claims of image-based sexual abuse and which, at the last count that I am aware of, since 2018 has had at least a dozen officers with barring orders against them. This shows that, when it comes to discussing proposed new powers, we need to couple that with a discussion about democratic control over the police force in this country. We also need to discuss it in the context that the priority for extra resources is the underfunded services I have mentioned, all of which have a proven track record of helping survivors with both support and healing.

The final point I want to make concerns of the role of active social movements in challenging misogyny, challenging rape culture and challenging the culture that facilitates sexual offences and gender-based violence in this country. Active social movements played a key role in the recent gains in LGBTQ rights, and active social movements played a key role in winning the changes for the repeal of the archaic anti-abortion laws and for abortion rights in this country. It can and, I think, will be the same on this issue as well.

Active social movements challenging gender-based violence and femicide are hugely important. Next week, on Thursday, 25 November, is the UN day set aside and designated International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and gender-based violence. I am sure there will be many activities and campaigning events around the country, and I am going to draw attention to just a few of them. ROSA, the socialist feminist organisation, is organising what it is describing as a Walk With Women. It is asking people to show solidarity and to walk with women in Dublin city centre, Dublin west and Cork. I think this is a very valuable initiative and I would appeal to people to support these and other initiatives and to participate in these initiatives. They are important events.

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