Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is clearly a timely and important motion for the House to debate and for every Member to have an opportunity to comment on. I commend Sinn Féin on using its Private Members' time to give us all a platform to speak tonight. On rare occasions in our nation's history, an event happens that stops people in their tracks. One such occasion clearly happened on Wednesday last in County Offaly. The murder of Ashling Murphy jolted every one of us out of whatever we were doing at the moment we heard about it. It demanded our immediate attention and focus. Like everybody else who has spoken, I send my deepest condolences to Ashling's family, her partner, her work colleagues, her friends, her pupils and all who have been so deeply affected by her savage murder.

The murder investigation will continue to take its course. Enormous efforts are being made by An Garda Síochána to investigate this most awful of crimes and to bring those responsible to justice. We will allow the Garda to do its job but the profound question being posed to every citizen, everyone in this State and every one of us relates to how we respond. It is not just about how we respond to this specific dreadful murder and the robbing of a life with such promise and potential, but, more immediately, to the culture that has tolerated sexual and gender-based violence and the backdrop of sexism and misogyny that has supported it through the years. I have contributed to many of the debates on societal issues in this House over the years. In that context, changes in the law or the establishment of new agencies have been important steps. The most important step in dealing with all these fundamental societal problems, namely, a change in culture, is the most difficult to achieve.

As a nation, and the Minister alluded to it in her contribution, we are on a difficult journey from the establishment of this State, the centenary of which we are celebrating, where women were chattels; subservient; required to leave the Civil Service on marriage; incarcerated in Magdalen laundries; subjected to symphysiotomy; denied their basic human and sexual rights; and, most oppressive of all, made silent in their suffering. All of us have heard down the years, in our individual case work, the individual horrible tales of ruined lives oppressed into silence.

We know that we are on this long journey and, as the Minister indicated, we have made considerable progress from those darkest of days. However, we also know we have a long way to go. The challenge now is for us to commit to the creation of a society where all women feel and are safe and where true equality can be achieved.

The steps and proposals set out in this motion are an important start. The work programme of the committee on gender equality, which will be chaired by my colleague, Deputy Bacik, will also be of huge importance. The specific measures set out in the motion include a national strategy; an implementation programme specifically set out; a clear and adequate stream of resourcing in terms of money, buildings and personnel; implementation of the recommendations of the study on familicide and domestic homicide; a proper national database on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence; early completion of the sexual violence survey currently under way; and the establishment of a specific unit within the Department of the Taoiseach.

I welcome the indication from An Taoiseach that he would convene a meeting of party leaders to discuss these things and I know all party leaders in the House will involve themselves in that, but there is a benefit to a specific unit in the Taoiseach's Department. In major crises, having meetings formally chaired by the Taoiseach that bring progress reports is considerably important in making sure timelines are achieved and work is actually done.

These are important and impactive measures that should be supported and must be acted upon but the mood of the nation demands more. For once, each of us citizens, in which I include myself and everybody else, is called on to examine our individual actions, attitude, language and above all, our individual behaviour, to make a public commitment never to tolerate and certainly never to perpetrate an act of violence, either by word or deed, against a woman and call out sexism and misogyny when we see it and not to walk away.

I listened to the debate earlier where many women Members made powerful personal testimonies about their own experiences and we have heard some further ones tonight. These are enormously impactive and are things that people have internalised. Politicians and political parties bear a specific responsibility in this regard. We must look to ourselves and our behaviour to ensure women are safe and welcome in our political system and that anyone we endorse to stand for public office, in our parties' names or as Independents, subscribes to these basic norms of behaviour and practice. This person must practice these norms, if he or she is to be supported by all our political parties.

Institutions in this State have in the past refused to address abuses in our midst. Let us now make sure that is ended. Let us all, from this moment on, refuse to look the other way. I said that cultural change is the most difficult to bring about and so it is, but this change is happening all the time too. Macho culture and laddism are learned; they are innate. They are observed behaviour. It can and must be changed.

Maleness should not be interchangeable with aggression or defined by belligerence. Most men want a different definition of "manhood". Let us all now set about creating that new definition and, in doing so, changing that culture I talked about, in order that it will be possible for all women and girls to take a run without being fearful or in terror.

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