James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There has been a number of important questions here. I will not be able to address every single one of them but I will certainly endeavour for the Department to get responses to each of them. I wish to thank the Deputies for their contributions to a very important Bill. I am pleased to respond where I can on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee. It is very encouraging to see the levels of support and goodwill towards this legislation. I think everybody was in favour of it, albeit with certain concerns and questions raised. Much has been said about the need for this agency and the value it will bring. However, that in no way negates any of the tireless work done by numerous agencies and bodies and their partners in the voluntary sector to provide supports and protections for victims and survivors, or the efforts made to increase public awareness of DSGBV, its causes, its enablers and its many harmful impacts. I am very familiar with the Wexford women's refuge and the Wexford Rape Crisis Centre and the very good work they do. We also always have to take into account those who are working with the victims of DSGBV and the trauma they themselves can experience in dealing with these very traumatic experiences.

There has never been a lack of application or commitment on the part of those tasked with these responsibilities. What has been lacking is a dedicated and sufficiently empowered centre of excellence to pull all of this good work together, push it forward in a joined-up manner and be a reservoir of expert support for colleagues across the public service. Experience has shown that what is needed now is a permanent structure with ring-fenced resources and expert staff to lead the delivery of Government strategies on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence; to plan and oversee the much-needed expansion of refuge accommodation nationwide; to manage the funding of key domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services and ensure the highest standards of delivery; to deliver high-quality awareness campaigns and information to the public, victims and people at risk; and to conduct continuous research and consultation to help assess whether the Government's policies, programmes and initiatives are meeting the needs of those they serve. The proposed agency will do all of this and more.

Establishing the agency on a statutory footing will give it the certainty, authority, expertise and ring-fenced resourcing that it needs to deliver on its mandate. This will ensure that there is an unwavering focus on the twin goals of zero tolerance and maximum support for those affected. While it is not practicable or appropriate to set out in statute every project or task that this State body might carry out, great care has been taken to ensure that its statutory functions are sufficiently open and broad-ranging to provide a strong and continuous mandate. Similarly, it is important to ensure that the functions are clearly delineated without being unduly restrictive. By way of example, the functions relating to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services have been drafted to ensure that the agency’s hands are not tied in respect of the types of service it may support, and also that such support is not necessarily limited to providing funding. Particular care has been taken to set out the context within which the agency is to perform its functions. This includes the statutory obligation on the agency to engage and collaborate with external stakeholders and to have regard to the diverse needs and circumstances of victims and persons at risk.

Careful attention was given to setting out the governance and accountability arrangements in the Bill. In this regard, the arrangements differ in certain respects from the general scheme. These changes were made for a number of reasons: to ensure the necessary demarcation of responsibilities between the chief executive and the board, to provide the clearest and most efficient line of accountability to the Minister and to allow the board to focus more on providing value-adding strategic oversight and policy advice. The board retains a strong and influential role under the Bill. While the functions of the agency shall be performed through the chief executive, he or she shall be required to consult and seek the guidance of the board when preparing the agency’s multi-annual corporate plan and annual business plan and will be required to have regard to the board’s views. The board will formally monitor and appraise the implementation of those plans, including public appraisal by the agency's annual report, which will be laid before the Houses and published online. More generally, the board will provide strategic direction to the agency, give advice and guidance to the chief executive and promote good corporate governance in agency. The board will also have the vital role of providing expert and independent policy advice to the Minister.

A wider point of accountability relates to the fact that this agency will be dispersing significant sums of public money for the provision of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence services. Therefore, the Bill seeks to ensure not only that there are clear and thorough accountability arrangements for the agency itself, but that there are robust yet reasonable accountability requirements for the organisations in receipt of funding from the agency. This is in the interests not only of the taxpayer, but of all those who need to avail of these services. These statutory obligations will be fleshed out on an administrative basis by service-level agreements between the agency and each funded provider.

The Minister, Deputy McEntee, and I are firmly of the belief that this statutory agency is vitally needed and will have a fundamental role to play in addressing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and helping those affected. Of course, this Bill is not the only legislative response that is needed. In fact, it forms part of a series of legislative measures that this Government has introduced and that aim to help counter domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and better support victims and survivors. In the area of criminal law alone, and with the support of this House, there have been several notable developments this year. The Sex Offenders (Amendment) Act 2023, enacted in April, will strengthen the management and monitoring of sex offenders in the community. The Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023, which was signed into law in July, is a wide-ranging Act whose provisions include introducing stalking and non-fatal strangulation as stand-alone offences. It also increases from five to ten years the maximum sentence for assault causing harm, which is one of the most common offences in domestic violence cases. Also in July, the Minister published the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Human Trafficking) Bill 2023, which will provide a range of new legal protections for victims of sexual and human trafficking offences. This year has also seen the commencement of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2020, under which victims of domestic violence will now be able to take up to five days per year of paid domestic violence leave. Earlier in the year, the Minister introduced the landmark Family Courts Bill, which aims to make the court system much more user friendly, including for families and children, in cases where domestic violence is involved.

These legislative measures complement numerous other actions taken under the third national domestic, sexual and gender-based violence strategy by various Government bodies in collaboration with partners in civil society. To give just one example, Deputies will no doubt be aware that there is an ongoing series of high-profile awareness and information campaigns, including recent campaigns to raise awareness of victims' rights and of intimate image abuse as a criminal offence. Further awareness campaigns on consent and victim protection are planned for later this year. These campaigns are currently led by my Department but will become a responsibility of the new agency on its establishment, as will Tusla's current role in driving and overseeing the ambitious plan to double the number of refuge spaces nationally by 2026.

The planned agency will be fully occupied from the get go with these and many other work streams, so it is vital that it can hit the ground running. A dedicated team in my Department is working intensively with other stakeholders to prepare the ground so that the agency can begin to work in earnest early in the new year. A number of personnel from Tusla, including some recently recruited specialists, are expected to transfer to the new agency on its establishment. Work is ongoing to source other staff in the interim. Strong leadership of the agency will be a key success factor. In this regard, I am pleased to note that the Public Appointments Service has launched a campaign to recruit the agency's first chief executive. The successful candidate will be appointed on a five-year contract at a level equivalent to Assistant Secretary in the Civil Service.

I thank the Deputies for their many thoughtful and constructive contributions during this debate. There will be further opportunities to tease out the issues that have been raised and the Minister looks forward to a constructive discussion on the detailed provisions of the Bill on Committee Stage.

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