Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will pick up where I left off earlier and treat it as one debate. I thank Sinn Féin for its practical motion and we could not but support it. I welcome the fact that the Government is supporting it as well. However, this has happened many times with many motions. While acknowledging the Government’s bona fides, I sometimes despair about words spoken in this House. Ashling Murphy is dead. Her name means "dream" or "vision". The greatest tribute we could leave to her is to make the dream of zero tolerance of violence a reality. That would be a real legacy and would give meaning to words.

We have stood up here many times and I make no apology for doing that but one tires of it and one tires of the responses one receives over and over again. When we asked where the audit on extra spaces for refuges was last year we were told it would be published shortly. September and October passed and we are now nearly in February and the Government has given us no reason that was not published.

The audit on how sexual and domestic violence are treated in the various Departments was published last year and I thank the Minister for that. The audit shows that it was utterly fragmented. We are waiting on the third strategy but the audit made some interesting points on the second strategy. It stated: “Oversight responsibility is held by a (largely inactive) Interdepartmental Senior Officials Group...which is nominally accountable to the Cabinet”. It made many other points about gaps in knowledge and so on and it points out that there is “a disconnection between intended and actual action”, which raises “questions about what is blocking progress and how it can be addressed". I have looked at all of this and I have pointed to the fantastic work of Women’s Aid in 1997. It made recommendations, particularly on prevention, working with perpetrators and so on. Some 26 years later we are still talking about it. We have had the various murders of women that have been mentioned from 1996 on and we are barely touching on it.

I ask the Minister to forgive me for my cynicism on this issue. She knows I have spoken on this continuously since February 2016 and that I have demanded, asked, appealed and almost begged for a review of the SAVI report. Some 20 years later we are still talking about it although I know it is coming. It is only after extraordinary pressure from this mixed Dáil that this is happening. When we talk about a seminal or turning moment, let us go back to Manuela Riedo, look at the programme the Rape Crisis Network Ireland carried out with the Manuela Riedo Foundation and let us integrate it in the schools. If the Minister does nothing else after tonight, I ask her to read about the Manuela Riedo Foundation's collaboration with the Rape Crisis Network Ireland. I have no time left to go through it but I will speak to the Minister about that any time. That would be one practical thing to do.

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