Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Today, Women's Aid published its annual report for 2021 revealing a shocking number of disclosures of domestic violence. There were over 33,000 such disclosures last year. Over 2,300 cases of sexual abuse were disclosed to the organisation last year.

Disappointingly, we have yet to see publication of the third national strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, which has been promised for some months. As Chair of the Joint Committee on Gender Equality, I should say we have engaged with the Minister for Justice, with stakeholders and with Women's Aid, Safe Ireland and other organisations seeking to see the implementation of the important Citizens' Assembly recommendations on tackling gender-based violence.

There has been positive change in recent years, notably, among other legislation, the Domestic Violence Act 2018 and the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020. However, we urgently need to see the strategy published by the Department of Justice and, indeed, to see then how we can proceed to carry out any further legislative reform that is needed. I ask the Government to commit to seeing that strategy published before the end of this Dáil term in July.

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