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

I commend Natasha O’Brien and Bláthnaid Raleigh on having the courage to come forward and share their trauma that we might all learn. It is hard to believe that in 2024 women are still having to bear their souls in order to put the issue of gender-based violence onto the agenda. It is also hard to believe that it has been 31 years since Lavinia Kerwick did her ground-breaking interview with the late, great Gerry Ryan. I remember listening to Lavinia in 1993 and being shocked, although not about the rape and subsequent trial. We all knew that rape and gender-based violence were everyday occurrences, but we did not talk much about them and we certainly did not hear women on the radio talking about their own experience of rape. Thanks to writers such as Emily O’Reilly and Nell McCafferty, women’s trauma was exposed but to hear Lavinia speak about her own case in her own words was ground-breaking and there was a real belief that there would be no going back. We felt that cultural change could not be far away and that change for women was coming. How wrong we were.

We know there was no cultural shift and no big moment of societal change. If want the evidence of that, we simply have to fast-forward to Limerick in 2022 when Natasha O’Brien was battered into unconsciousness by Cathal Crotty while his friends watched. He would later boast about this vicious crime on social media. We can, therefore, say with conviction that the State has let down women like Natasha O’Brien, Bláthnaid Raleigh, Baiba Saulite, Marioara Rostas and Lavinia Kerwick. I could use my time to simply read off into the record the list of names of women who have been the victims of gender-based violence and have come forward and told their heartbreaking stories or those whose names we know because they have been brutally murdered. They deserve to be remembered but, more than that, they and their families deserve to know that there will be action.

We are two years into the Government’s zero-tolerance strategy. It seems that zero tolerance is a very long way off. Organisations such as Aoibhneas domestic abuse support in my area struggle for funding and all the while the epidemic of gender-based violence continues. We need to see more action. The Minister knows as well as I do that nothing says priority like funding. There must be funding for the DSGBV strategy. Announcements simply will not cut it.

I add my voice to the voices of Natasha and Bláthnaid by saying directly to young men, "You need to call out your peers". It is reported in a newspaper today that Bláthnaid has said that there is a demographic of young men who do not want to speak out against their peers. This is wrong and it cannot continue. Women deserve to be safe and looking at the statistics, we can see we are not safe. We will not be safe until every person calls out gender-based violence and those who perpetuate it.

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