Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I start by acknowledging Emma Reidy and the staff and volunteers who run the Aoibhneas domestic abuse support service in my own area. I am sure we all acknowledge this because we know the work they do. Many of us will refer people from our own constituency offices to the local service so there is nobody under any illusions about how acutely underfunded and under-resourced they are. As Deputy Daly has pointed out, there is an epidemic of DSGBV in this State and it is only when one comes across a case that one actually sees how the services fall short of what the victims need.

I have been to visit the service many times in Aoibhneas and I have seen the work they do. I see not just how much the work is valued by the victims and the survivors, and it is, but also how much that work is valued by the whole community. It is very important that people know that they can signpost victims to a place. The victims, the survivors, their advocates and the agencies need to be central to the establishment of this new agency.

The Minister of State mentioned earlier in his remarks - the Minister, Deputy McEntee, has said this on many occasions - that there is a great deal of talk about zero tolerance. We all agree that there can be no tolerance of DSGBV but we need to ask ourselves what zero tolerance actually looks like. How do we get from where we are now to zero tolerance? How do we get there, when we read about 999 calls for victims of DSGBV not being answered, or when we see that there are counties that still do not have a refuge? How do we go from where we are to zero tolerance, which, to be frank, seems to be a very long way off? This agency must play an important role in the work towards zero tolerance. Because of this, the Government needs to get the agency right from the very start. Getting it right means ensuring that the board and the agency itself is equipped to deal with the diversity of our population.

Domestic, sexual and gender-based violence does not discriminate. It is regrettably present in every area of society. There is no group, no class or culture that is immune from the scourge of DSGBV. This new agency must be diverse and inclusive in its make-up so that it can adequately address the needs of every group in our society. It has to be responsive and dynamic. In order for it to be like that, it must be reflective of society in general.

We know that agencies like Aoibhneas do not turn people away. They make do and mend and make the meagre resources which they have stretch. The staff and the volunteers in these agencies are made up from the local community and reflect that community. I believe that is very important because when the victims approach services like Aoibhneas, they know they will be understood, their plight and situation can be related to, and appropriate support can be put in place. It is important that the views of the agencies who are working in this space are taken on board and listened to because these are the people who are on the front line.

In the speaking time remaining to me I want to briefly refer to the statistics published by the CSO recently. Half of 18- to 24-year-olds experienced sexual harassment in the last year. I very much wish that this figure was shocking but it is not. Neither is the finding that women are more than twice as likely to experience sexual harassment as men.

If the Minister of State is serious about having a zero tolerance approach - I believe he is - it has to start at the classroom level. Education has to be central to the work of this agency. In order to do that, we need to see the whole of the Government working together. Responding to the findings of this survey, the chief executive of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Noeline Blackwell, said it was timely that social, personal and health education curriculums in secondary schools are being updated given the level of abuse among young people. DSGBV is a whole-of-society issue and the response has to be a whole-of-society and whole-of-government response. I believe it has to start early in a person’s life. We must start in our schools because I cannot see how we will get from where we are now to where we all want to be - the zero tolerance we all want to achieve - unless there is a whole-of-government approach and unless we start with children at an early age.

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