Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Again, I commend the Deputy on her work in this area. I have seen her output on social media, including Instagram, and how effective it can be. She is right about the effect on people, even if we are just reading about it. Even the fact that so many women have lost their lives takes an emotional toll. The Deputy's work is good because it keeps their memory alive and gives credence to the momentum we are trying to maintain. Regarding the walk she mentioned, fear of harassment and violence should never be normalised. For those of us who have spoken about being victims in whatever way that transpired, it takes an emotional toll as well. Those stories are really important because this can happen to anybody, whether on a long or short walk, in the daytime or at night. The sort of gratuitous violence that can occur in Irish society is really regrettable and should not happen.

One of the ways to raise awareness and change attitudes, as the Deputy spoke about, is for us, as women, to talk about the issue here in the Dáil Chamber and also to get men involved in talking about it. The work done by the Government is obviously also important. The Ministers, Deputies McEntee and O'Gorman, are at pains to tell us about the work they are doing and that work is significant. They already have substantially increased the budget for 2022 for supports for dealing with domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and measures to confront and deal with the types of issues that are happening at a societal level. There is also significant investment being made by An Garda Síochána more generally and through other mechanisms as well. The consultation on the strategy concludes next Thursday and people need to make their views known. This is a real opportunity to get it right and transform society in order that women who want to go about their normal daily business can fail safe in the same way that men do. Obviously, men also can suffer from violence, but it is predominantly women who experience this particular type of violence. That is what this strategy endeavours to achieve and we hope it will be a success in ensuring we have a shared goal of a zero-tolerance approach to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.

See this speech in context