Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with my colleague Deputy Pringle. I welcome the Bill. It contains 45 sections and five Parts and its purpose is to set up a new agency to deal with DSGBV. However, it is important to put these proposals in perspective, and a very stark perspective is to consider the context of this debate. I take exception when people complain that there is nobody in this Chamber at certain times. Deputies are very busy, attending committee meetings and so on. I never join in that commentary. However, it is significant that there is not huge interest in a debate on DSGBV. I say that most reluctantly because I will be rushing off as soon as I finish speaking. This is a really important topic with serious consequences for the physical and mental health of the women and men affected, not to mention our economy.

A report by Women's Aid, Femicide Watch 1996-2023, indicates that 261 women died violently in this country in the period from 1996 up to 23 July this year. Twelve women died violently last year, one for every month of the year, which is the highest number since 2007. Six women have died so far this year, as of 23 July.

A total of 20 children have died during incidents where women have died violently. A total 63%, which is 168 women, have been killed in their own homes, and 87% of women where the case has been resolved were killed by a man known to them, with 13% of women killed by a stranger. One in every three femicide victims is killed by a current or former male intimate partner, which is 55% of resolved cases. Women under the age of 35 make up 50% of the cases in Ireland. In almost all murder-suicide cases, which is 22 out of 23, the killer was the woman's partner. That is the background to today's debate as we talk about introducing an agency under the legislation.

I will turn now to assessing the social and economic costs, which I do reluctantly but I do it for the economists, who are predominantly male, because when they tell us about a thriving economy, they leave out quite a lot of important variables and factors. Assessing the Social and Economic Costs of DV is a July 2021 report jointly published by NUIG - my own university in Galway - and Safe Ireland. The report estimates the annual cost of domestic violence is at least €2.7 billion to the Irish economy. This does not include the cost of service provision or housing. That figure is an underestimate in my opinion. The Bill seeks to build on initiatives in place up to now, and on the suffering and deaths of women and some men. That is what we are doing here today. I would like to be very positive and welcome it, but my experience in the Dáil today has made me extremely sceptical as a woman, as a Deputy, and as a mother. Outside of housing and health, this is the topic I have raised most frequently since 2016, as have other Deputies, with the view to doing something and stopping the talking.

I worry that the agency will be a further layer of bureaucracy. I will support the legislation but I have serious concerns it will be another level of bureaucracy. I thank the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for compiling the digest. As usual it is a very good paper. It tells us that the expected cost of the new agency will be €3.4 million per year. In the meantime, I have here the volume from a domestic violence organisation working on the ground in Moycullen, which used to be in Oughterard and which is struggling to continue. The Department of Justice met it earlier this year but nothing has been resolved in relation to the wonderful service it provides, yet we are going to set up a new agency that will cost €3.4 million per year with a CEO. This week we talked about Children's Health Ireland and the CEO and a board being totally unaccountable. There is no mechanism for accountability and no mechanism for publishing minutes or knowing what is happening in Children's Health Ireland. Here we are, however, setting up a new board. I will go along with it as it was one of the recommendations and a commitment in the third national strategy. I wish to put on the record that I am extremely worried it will be unaccountable and that the CEO will be reporting back to the Minister and not to the board, as I understand it. In reporting back to the Minister, it is totally under the control of the Minister and Ministers change.

Again, let me put this into perspective, with my experience of the timeline, if perhaps the Minister of State believes I am being too negative. The domestic and gender-based violence task force was set up in 1996. Eithne FitzGerald topped the poll for the Labour Party in 1992. She wrote a very good introduction to the report when it was published in 1997. Ms FitzGerald set out the blueprint back in 1997. That was the year my second child was born, who is now 26. Nothing has happened since in reducing the so-called epidemic of violence. I will come back to discuss that word "epidemic". The SAVI report was published in 2002 and it showed the prevalence of violence against men and women, but predominantly women. They followed that up a few years later with an excellent qualitative report but the Government did not listen. It noted that the women and men who came forward did so because of the care taken to do that research when they disclosed for the very first time what happened to them at an earlier stage in their lives.

We have had various strategies, with this being the third strategy. We have had an audit by Tusla around the refuge services, services which leave a lot to be desired in terms of quantity. The commitment even now is way below what is demanded or obligated by us under the Istanbul Convention. A citizens' assembly was set up with no remit to deal with it. Thanks be to God - or to the Goddess - they put in a special chapter on domestic and gender-based violence. They included it because they saw it was of the absolute and utmost importance for equality issues. There was also the audit of the structures, as I have mentioned, which showed that notwithstanding the 1996 task force setting out exactly what needed to be done, right up to 2021, 2022 and 2023, all of the structures are divided from each other none are aligned with each other. Presumably that is what this agency will tackle.

The sexual violence survey by the Central Statistics Office was finally published 20 years after the original survey by SAVI. It must be remembered that organisations on the ground had been begging and appealing to various governments to carry out an up-to-date survey. That in itself has taken an inordinate amount of time. When it was published by the CSO, we found that 52% of women and 28% of men surveyed reported having experienced sexual violence at some stage in their lifetime, with 39% of women and 12% of men having experienced sexual violence as a child. These figures are just horrific and we throw them out as if they are numbers, without analysing the consequences of this on the psychological and mental health of those affected and their families, the intergenerational effect, and the effect on the economy or for participating in a democracy. If a person is desperately trying to survive as a victim, it is impossible to participate in society. Those who manage to do it have my respect.

We have also had a study on familicide and the domestic and family violence death reviews. This was published, finally, in May 2023. I mention this because it was commissioned by the Department of Justice back in 2019. Unfortunately, Norah Gibbons, who did great work on it, died unexpectedly. I pay tribute to her. Subsequently, Maura Butler was put in place to complete it. The Government that appointed Maura Butler also failed to recognise that Maura Butler had already been commissioned to carry out the statutory review of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, which has not been carried out to date. Ms Butler has now departed the scene. I have no idea why but I am sure there are reasons. That review, however, was never carried out. The Government has a statutory obligation to carry out the review but this has not been done. Here we are in 2023 with no reasons given for that. If we are seriously committed to equality and treating women equally, then that is the most basic review that should have been done. The Government is failing in its legal duty.

On foot of the recommendations of the homicide report, three groups were to be set up: an interdepartmental group; an advisory group of NGOs, etc.; and an advisory group of the families of victims. Have these groups been established? Is there a clarification on that? Have the terms of reference been clarified?

I will conclude now and hand over to my colleague. I want to work with the Government, as I wanted to work with previous Governments, but I have absolutely no faith that there is an understanding of what it is to be the victim of sexual and gender-based violence. The word "epidemic" has been used and I took the trouble of looking up the word. We all know what it means but it has no relevance at all to sexual violence. The word is defined as a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time. That is what an epidemic is. A pandemic applies to multiple regions, such as with Covid and other infectious diseases. Sexual and gender-based violence is not an epidemic. It is not a pandemic. It is not a disease. It is a crime. The term "domestic violence" upsets me because it reduces and diminishes what is happening in relation to violence, mostly by men against women but also by some women against men. When we reduce language like this we reduce our ability to act. We make it acceptable. That is what happened for a very long time with gardaí who did not wish to interfere in a family situation where the most horrific violence was being perpetrated against the woman.

Since then, the Garda has improved with its protective units, but yesterday and today, I despaired when I heard of the threat in relation to the promised action and that the protective units will suffer or will be removed, after we worked for years to get the Garda to have an understanding. Some gardaí are excellent on the ground, but they were under-resourced, undertrained and not educated in the sense that we all need to be educated in relation to the consequences of domestic and sexual-based violence.

The Ceann Comhairle was at the conference sponsored by the Council of Europe today. I took the trouble of reading its report last year, which looked at the future of the Council of Europe. It included a whole chapter on sexual and gender-based violence such is the extent of it across the world. When we clap ourselves on the back and we talk about a thriving economy and a rich country, we are doing it on the back predominantly of women and carers. They should be recognised and valued.

If the Minister of State is serious about this, and I believe he is, I am happy to work with him. However, I would like clarification on the agency and the cost of it and that it will not become merely another layer of administration. There must be a built-in review, but even that does not mean a review will happen as we have seen in relation to the legislation I mentioned where we have been waiting three years for the review. A review of this legislation is essential if we are serious about dealing with this type of violence.

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