Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This House and this country is deeply indebted to those brave victims of gender-based crime who have waived their right to anonymity to tell their own deeply personal stories. I mean women like Natasha O'Brien, who is here present and who I had the privilege of meeting this morning, and Bláthnaid Raleigh, who, again, bravely told her story on national radio. They have given a voice to countless others who like them are victims of unspeakable violence but whose voice has not been heard. Their testimony cannot be a focus for us for this week or indeed a month or a year. It must be a final impetus to this Legislature to say that we intend to do whatever is necessary to root out gender-based violence once and for all, to offer victims of such violence complete protection and to hold all perpetrators to full account.

The motion before the House has a number of specific and detailed proposals. I will deal with two of them. I will deal with places of refuge. I commend the Minister on both her statements and her actions on this issue. I am very familiar with the new refuge under construction in Wexford town. I visited the site with Deputy Bacik a few weeks ago. It is to open in September. It will be a terrific facility for the people of Wexford and I acknowledge the allocation of €6.5 million by the Minister for this important project. When it opens in September, it will have 12 self-contained apartments. I commend the work of the voluntary chair of that committee, Vicky Barron, and the chair of the building committee George Lawlor, who is the mayor of Wexford and has done so much to ensure that the money is there. There was a comment by a representative in recent times that it was lying idle. It is under construction. The money is there not only to complete it but to outfit it and it will be a fantastic facility. This is a model that should available to every community. That is the point I want to make. It is great to have that in Wexford but we must provide certainty that a safe place exists for women suffering in silence right now - sometimes in dread of staying in place but equally in dread of trying to escape. I hope the roll-out of those centres will be accelerated in order that every woman in difficulty in any part of the country will have such access.

The second issue I want to touch on is the review of sentencing. Obviously, the separation of powers is an essential feature of our democracy but just as the courts must be independent and each judge must make an individual decision on each case before her or him, there must also be a consistency about the courts. We established the Judicial Council to ensure proper training and proper consistency. This council has set up a sentencing committee to review and provide guidelines to the Judiciary. In April, the Supreme Court determined that guidelines on personal injuries issued by the Judicial Council were valid only because they were endorsed by specific legislation passed by the Oireachtas. Equally, when the guidelines on sentencing are completed, they must have that legislative underpinning. We must expeditiously provide that legal underpinning as the work goes on. There is a significant volume of work to be done. Deputy Bacik referenced it in terms of the in-depth empirically grounded understanding of current sentencing practice. That is not available. Nor do I believe that the sentencing committee of the Judicial Council has the capacity to do that. I hope that the Minister would make reference to this in her comments today and talk to the Judicial Council about whether it needs additional staff, the support of her Department or the support of the Courts Service to provide that analysis as expeditiously as possible. It must be assisted in its work.

Those two points are just two of the issues that we can deal with as an Oireachtas to ensure there is consistency in sentencing practice, that people cannot say "well there's a judge who will be more lenient or better than another", that there will be an understanding that the courts act consistently and, finally, that there is a place of refuge for everyone who needs it.

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