Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Natasha O'Brien to the Dáil and thank her for the remarkable contribution she has made since speaking about her own experience - speaking up and speaking out. It was a great privilege to meet Natasha this morning. I would not have met her if it was not for what happened to her and her bravery in speaking about what happened to her. This goes to the heart of the debate we are having here this morning. Similarly I pay tribute to Bláthnaid Raleigh. Anybody who heard her testimony to Oliver Callan on the radio this morning could not but be moved by what she had to say in describing her experience and her experience of the judicial process. Yesterday, the issue of the shortage of judges was raised. There were many delays. It is five years since that vile crime was perpetrated against her and it took five years for the case to be heard, the perpetrator to be prosecuted and sentence to be handed down, so we do need more judges to hear these cases.

I will share a short personal experience I encountered a few weeks ago. I was walking to a local pub to meet some friends on a Saturday night. That walk would usually take about five minutes but on that night, it took me an hour and a half. It took me an hour and a half because I encountered a woman sitting on a wall outside her home.

The woman had encountered domestic abuse and a violent attack at the hands of someone she lives with. A young man had stopped when he saw what was happening and he saw her literally being kicked out of the home. He stopped to help. I stopped to help. We brought her across the road and took her to some degree of safety until the emergency services arrived. I called an ambulance and An Garda Síochána - it was a busy Saturday night in Drogheda - and she was taken to safety. A few days later I saw bags outside of that home. I do hope the woman is okay now and that she has been embraced by the services that we have. I hope she is well and doing okay and I hope that the perpetrator is held to full account as should be the case in any decent society. I share this story because of the very ordinariness of that evening and someone just encountering a situation like that on the way to having a drink with friends at a pub. This happens far too often. It is a feature of our society, it is completely unacceptable and it is wrong. I think about this incident a lot. I have thought about it a lot over the past few weeks since I encountered that situation. It just has to stop. Women are attacked and assaulted in all kinds of ordinary circumstances, if I can use that term. It has been said by many people that we are a much more equal society now and women have more equality. We do not have full equality in this society because people do not have the freedom. Women do not have the same freedom I have to walk down the street feeling safe. Why should a woman, in broad daylight, have to pretend to be on her phone to give her some degree of safety because of the fear that far too many women have while walking down streets in this country?

In 2022, the Central Statistics Office said that more than twice as many women than men cited safety concerns as a reason for not walking more frequently. What kind of a place have we become? The World Health Organization said in 2021 that globally there is an epidemic of gender violence and that it is "devastatingly pervasive". There were 60,000 emergency calls to An Garda Síochána last year to report domestic abuse. As described in our motion, Women's Aid states that more than 40,000 disclosures were made in 2023 of abuse against women and children. This is the highest number ever recorded. We know that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that while these are the cases recorded by Women's Aid and other agencies it is not even half the story.

I will conclude in the limited time I have available. There is an absolute responsibility on all of us as men to call this out and to show example. Sexism and misogyny is unacceptable in any format or any form in this country and in any circumstance. I welcome the zero-tolerance initiative but it requires funding. The Cuan approach is absolutely what is required. To make that a reality, it does need to be funded. Sexism and misogyny needs to be called out in all its forms all the time. We as men have a responsibility to do that, to show example, and to lead by example.

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