Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister reeled off a number of initiatives. I commend her on the initiatives she has taken but they do not deal with the embedded culture of tolerance of gender-based violence we have had in this State for decades. There are several things she can do. In fact, good things were being done in communities two decades ago to create zero tolerance of gender-based violence. What happened? When Fine Gael came into power and under the Fianna Fáil Government during austerity, all those things were cut dead completely. I commend Don Hennessy who provided training in our community and Amnesty International. We worked together with social workers, nurses, bartenders, nurses, hairdressers and across the spectrum to create the zero tolerance the Minister spoke about. It absolutely can be done if the will and resources are there to do it.

As I always say when I talk about violence against women and gender-based violence, the perpetrators have to stop. We have to demand that they stop. We have to call them out in this Chamber and in our communities. Otherwise, we are tolerating what they are doing. They are making a choice to inflict one of the most heinous crimes on human beings because they are women and because they are allowed to do it.

They make a choice because they get away with it, because the sanctions are not there, because they are not afraid to do it and because they use their power and control to keep women where they need them to be. There needs to be an entire reconfiguration of the justice system. The separation of the criminal and the family courts and the lack of communication between the two is dangerous and it is putting women and children at risk. The disconnect between the criminal and the family law system is dangerous. The delays in the family law cases where cases are dragged out for years are dangerous and are intolerable for victims. The criminal behaviour is not taken into account by the family law court even where there is a conviction and a sentence there. The orders under the Domestic Violence Act are not taken into account by the family law court. There are not enough Garda resources for those gardaí even to be able to do training on what they need to do. There has to be mandatory, appropriate training for judges as well.

Finally, will the Minister help to deal with some of the legacy cases? I am talking about legacy cases where women have been raped and tortured but their cases have not been heard properly. In some cases, you find that the prosecuting gardaí were, later on, convicted themselves. We really have to look at the legacy cases that have gone on for decades where the system has let women down.

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