Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I want to extend my sympathy to the parents, to the brother and sister, to the boyfriend, to the extended family of Ashling Murphy and to the community. Like many men and women in this country, I have participated in vigils and have shown solidarity. That is appropriate and it is the human thing to do. However, in doing that we also have an extra duty as legislators and elected Members to ensure that we make Ireland safe, not just for women but for all of us.

I am here tonight with just under two minutes. In that time, I want to put focus on the number of times that we have stood here as women, and indeed my male colleagues, to give statements on violence against women. There have been statements but little action. I know that that Minister has taken a personal interest and I pay tribute to that. However, the numbers speak for themselves in our failure.

We are looking at Ashling Murphy's death as a watershed. I come from the city where Manuela Riedo in 2007 at 17 years of age. She had been barely a wet day in the country. That was to be watershed. That was ten years after task force on violence against women in 1997. It was ten years afterwards and that was to be a watershed. That followed on from Women's Aid in 1996, which put extraordinary pressure while on a shoestring budget on the Government at that time to produce this. That was produced.

In that time since 1996, the figures that are being used is that 244 women have lost their lives. Indeed, as has been mentioned already, a year tomorrow will mark the death of a young woman from Mongolia. I will not try to pronounce her name out of respect to the woman who was stabbed in the neck by a 14-year-old boy. She subsequently died on 3 February 2021. She deserves remembering, as do all other the faces since who have died. There are at least seven, not to mention the women and children who have suffered extraordinary violence and injury.

We ask ourselves: what are we doing? Where is the refuge report that was promised? Where is the national strategy that was promised to be published before Christmas? These are the specific questions that need to be asked. It is no longer acceptable that we got an answer last October to say that is would be published in the next few weeks. It has not been.

I will come back in later on the other motion.

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