Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, for attending for an important catch-up on domestic violence and domestic violence funding in the budget for 2023. As the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will know, I have taken opportunities over the year to highlight the names of victims of femicide – women identified by Women's Aid as having been killed since 1997 – to keep their names in the debate on domestic, gender-based and sexual violence. My doing so follows the outpouring of grief after the death of Ashling Murphy in Tullamore in January of this year.

The 19 women who died from domestic, sexual and gender-based violence in the month of September since 1997 are Elizabeth McCarthy, Maeve Byrne, Bettina Poeschel, Anna Finnegan, Theresa Doherty, Lisa Doyle, Ingrida Maciokaite, Linda Dunne, Ann Henry, Janet Mooney, Brenda Ahern, Sharon Coughlan, Melissa Mahon, Sheila McDonagh, Margaret Fahy, Eileen O'Sullivan, Marie O'Brien, Patricia Kierans and Raonaid Murray. I will never forget when Raonaid Murray died. We were about the same age. It was the first week back at college after the summer. Raonaid was a very young girl. Her killer has still not been found. Her family is from Glenageary, in my constituency. Her death was one that I remember with particular pain.

The 22 women and girls who died in October since 1997 are Charlene McAulliffe, Rachel O'Reilly, Amanda Jenkins, Geraldine Kissane, Manuela Riedo, Christina Hackett, Rebecca French, Meg Walsh, Joanne Mangan, Gillian Thornton, Marion O'Leary, Lorraine O'Connor, Amanda Carroll, Joselita da Silva, Kathleen Cuddihy, Rosemary Dowling, Aoife Phelan, Anne Colomines, Rachel Kiely, Natalie McGuinness, Seema Banu and Catherine Mullins. A number of those women's children were killed at the same time.

Doing this every two months is to give the women a name and voice on the Dáil record, because they were voiceless in death, and to remember them. It is also with a view to our being consistent in our follow-up and response to the very violent incidents that can happen. There is little point in expressing grief, shock and outrage without follow-up actions, whether these involve remembering all the women in a consistent way, in the way we do, or the follow-up that the Department of Justice has been engaged in for some time, particularly through the publication of the third strategy earlier this year and the funding that goes with that.

I congratulate the Department on its work over recent years on consolidating its policy and delivery role regarding domestic, gender-based and sexual violence of services. As the Minister of State will know, I have been critical of the disparate approaches across agencies and of how this led to a lack of delivery in some circumstances. It was not the primary role of Tusla, for example. Domestic violence services, in particular, lost out as a consequence of that.

The most important way they have lost out is through the lack of clarity on their funding. I refer particularly to a lack of multi-annual funding that would allow them to plan for the development of their services not just this year, but into next year, and to engage in capital project planning alongside the day-to-day delivery of services. I am keen to hear the Minister of State's update on the Department's perspective on this matter, particularly with regard to the multi-annual funding element, which would be of great significance to domestic violence service providers and partners of government all over the country.

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