Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this important motion. I truly commend Natasha O'Brien and Bláthnaid Raleigh for their incredible bravery in the face of the vicious assaults and traumatisation they have suffered. There are many things that one could say but in the very short time that is available to me, I will focus on the bravery and courage of Natasha and Bláthnaid in speaking out and urging our society to reject the sort of horror and violence they suffered. That is probably the most important action that could be taken when our society and successive governments have failed to address the toxic culture and ideology of misogyny, prejudice and violence that can lead to these sorts of horrific attacks and then the failure to give justice to the people who are the victims of the attacks.

There are many things we could say about our failure, including the lack of refuge places. My own area is one of the nine counties that does not have refuge places. The Istanbul Convention requires that my area have 48 places. We were promised 24 places and are being given 12 which will not be completed until the end of this year. We can talk all we like about these issues but we are not actually delivering changes. Adult counselling services are woefully lacking in terms of adult community health for victims.

There is a lack of psychological counselling in schools. Successive governments have failed to advance legislation such as the Bill we put forward on the need for objective sex education in schools, which was blocked by the Government. I heard Bláthnaid Raleigh say this morning that one of the things she was urging is precisely that we do something to address the education of young people. We talk about it and we do nothing.

I want to pick up on the connection between Natasha sticking up for LGBT people and then suffering a violent attack by somebody who was abusing LGBT people and then thought it was okay to beat a woman unconscious and boast about it afterwards. A judge did not think this was worthy of serious sanction. Even now, people online are attacking Natasha and trying to essentially justify the violence she suffered. We must do something about people in far-right groups who are actively promoting ideologies of hate, dehumanisation, misogyny, anti-LGBT prejudice and other forms of dehumanisation.

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