Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also thank the Labour Party for bringing the motion before the House. I also thank Natasha and Bláthnaid and other women who have got this issue back on the agenda again, because we as public representatives must ensure every woman feels safe, going forward.

Considering all that has been discussed this morning and what will be discussed later when members make statements on tackling all forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, it is fair to focus for a moment on the third national strategy. I want to focus on the way the proposed involvement of the Ombudsman for Children in the new strategy was handled, which led him to announce in January he was removing his office from that proposal. The Department of Justice approached the office of the ombudsman and asked whether it would consider overseeing the actions about children in this action plan. Over the couple of years since there was an over-and-back between the Department and the ombudsman on the matter of providing extra resources for the role, which the Department initially said would not be a problem. After the first year of this, nothing had come from the Department of Justice, so the Department of children was contacted, only to tell the ombudsman it had no knowledge of it. The Department of Justice ultimately admitted it was not going to happen and sought to pass it off to the Department of children. The ombudsman told me he was left with the impression at the time that the Department was giving credibility to its actions by using the ombudsman organisation.

What we saw here was the Department's failure to live up to its initial commitment of adding to the strategy the valuable input of the ombudsman and then seeking to relinquish itself of its responsibility for not doing so. In correspondence after that, the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, told me that he was prepared to continue working with the Department of Justice, the author of the strategy and the implementation plan, the Ombudsman for Children's Office, OCO, and how it can contribute to the working of the strategy. It is far from a commitment to actually make the resources available to enable the ombudsman to dedicate the time needed to make a difference to those for whom this strategy is devised. When will the Minister commit to doing just that? Otherwise, the message that is being sent from here falls far short of putting words into action.

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