Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We will be supporting the Sinn Féin motion. I want to send my solidarity to the Murphy family at this terrible time. They probably cannot comprehend that Ashling will no longer be in their presence. None of us this week should have known about Ashling Murphy. In the past week, her life brought every village and town together like never before in a spontaneous call of solidarity in song, in deep shock but also terrible silence. Many of us tried to understand why this has happened, why in daylight, such a darkness should befall a young woman going for a run. To understand and comprehend, we must look at the deep levels of sexism that exist in society, the crass nature of objectifying women and then some men subjecting them to abhorrent abuse, both mental and physical. The toxic nature of the promotion of sexual violence by pornographic websites is both corrosive and very dangerous. It is extremely insidious, in particular for young men who watch the horrible content that is online.

This must be a turning point and I think the Minister will make the call to make this the turning point. Women must feel safe, not only in their home but in their workplace, their street and in their town. They have a right to feel very safe but this can only happen by all of us challenging the terrible sexism that exists in modern society. There is probably not one solution. We can do everything on a personal level, but there is no getting away from the fact that there exists an epidemic of sexism via the Internet and other means that demeans women and then men act out terrible violence against women. That must stop.

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