Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this debate. I concur with colleagues' comments on the amount of work the Minister has done to bring this issue to the fore and try to improve what we do, as a society and as legislators, to address it. Often, society does not even recognise the problem for what it is. Domestic violence, unless it is actually on people's doorstep, is often seen as just as a domestic incident by neighbours and others. That is unfortunate. We need much wider recognition within society of what is happening.

I recently visited the women's refuge in Wexford. The current building is basic but a new refuge will soon be opened. Paramount to progress in this area is ensuring there is adequate resourcing. Where we are letting everybody down is in the general idea that women's needs are met by women's refuges. Those refuges do phenomenal work but they can only provide for a 90-day stay. We are talking about women who have left their home, often with one, two, three or four children, while the perpetrator of the violence against them stays under his own roof. After 90 days, a woman in that situation will be evicted from the refuge. She will become homeless if she has nowhere else to go and if the perpetrator remains in the home and she cannot return there. If a victim is eligible for social housing, county councils then face the issues arising out of the housing crisis. I am not at all trying to heap this onto the Minister's lap but these are the facts we live with today. In effect, the victim is being doubled down on for doing the right thing in leaving the perpetrator of the violence against her and trying to help herself. In so doing, women get themselves into a position where they become homeless. It really is through no fault of their own.

One suggestion to address this is that step-down facilities be provided. In Wexford, for example, the building that is currently the women's refuge could be kept as a safe house, when the new refuge is opened, in which supports could continue to be delivered to parents and children. Under the current system, there are huge welfare concerns in respect of children. What is the point of providing women and children with refuge for three months before, in effect, turning them back into society without any help or support? We are not rehabilitating the children in that situation. The parent who is the victim is not supported to move on from her current situation and ensure her children move on from it. We do not have those supports in place. In fact, we do not have a policy to provide those supports. I ask the Minister to consider my proposal. In Wexford, we have the opportunity to use the current refuge as a safe house or what would, in other contexts, be called a step-down facility. When 90 days are up, women staying in the new refuge will have access to a facility that allows them to be rehabilitated and supported. We need to put child welfare officers in place to protect children. Victim parents must be able to access parental supports.

It might even be possible to support women for long enough to get them through the court system and to a point where the perpetrator, if needs be, is removed from the family home and the victim can return to it. As a society, I am not sure we can continue to do things the way they are currently done. As my colleague Deputy Bríd Smith said, the perpetrator seems to have all the rights, including property rights and everything else. As the Minister knows, it is not easy, nor should it be, to secure a barring order. However, in instances where domestic violence has been proven, it should become a lot easier. As a society, we should consider making provision for the removal of perpetrators of domestic violence from the family home until such time as we can facilitate returning the children to a situation where they have the best opportunity to remain in contact with their friends, stay within society as they know it and be rehabilitated outside of the domestic violence sphere. That is paramount to how we move forward. It is pointless to provide refuge if the other necessary supports are not in place. I think the Minister will agree with that. It is the direction in which we need to go.

We have a long way to go in addressing this issue. That is not a criticism of the Minister. We need to ensure that Cuan, which she launched in February, is resourced. It must not be hamstrung in its remit of delivering the funding required for essential services. Many of our services are failed services. Child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, have huge recruitment and retention issues. The children's disability network teams, CDNTs, are the same. There is no real service being provided because of the lack of supports for staff. As a result, they are leaving in their droves. We do not want the same to happen with women's refuges. It will cost a lot of money to ensure that does not happen. I do not want to see scrimping and scraping. Victims must not be victimised all over again because of a lack of resources. We must look at the child welfare element of gender-based violence. We must look at how we can support and nurture victims instead of punishing them. We must support them back into what we would all agree is a normal life, which is one without domestic violence or intimate partner violence. That is paramount to how we move forward.

I witnessed at first hand a situation where a mother who was the victim of domestic violence had her four children taken into care because her time in a refuge was up and, faced with becoming homeless, she was going to return to the partner who had been bailed on the charges of domestic violence against her. The response from the Garda was that the violent partner would not come into the station. When the gardaí were asked why they would not arrest him, their answer was that they were waiting for the armed response unit. That is a damning indictment of where the Garda is at when it comes to dealing with domestic violence. Again, I am not having a jibe at the Minister. I am telling her the reality of the situation. If gardaí are not prepared, as members of a front-line service, to arrest someone who is a perpetrator of domestic violence and who could be brought in for having done much worse, we have a problem within the Garda and within our prison system.

I ask that we consider providing more prison spaces. In this regard, I am fairly sure that the response to the parliamentary question I have submitted requesting the number of perpetrators on bail will result in a great discussion in itself. We are letting the victim down on all fronts. Members of the Garda are not prepared to arrest someone who has perpetrated very grievous domestic violence and the victim is being told she has nowhere to go, resulting in her having to return to the perpetrator, who should be in jail. That is the vicious circle of domestic violence today.

Ultimately, the four children who have been put in care because of the situation described are being let down by society as a whole. This is not just about gender-based violence; there are so many branches to the problem and to where we have to go not only to change society but also to make it better for everybody to live in. We have a lot to do in this regard. I commend the Minister on her efforts thus far.

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