Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. Women in this country have been failed over and over again by our judicial system, our health system, our education system, the Defence Forces and us as legislators. Each day we fail to address the rise in gender-based violence, misogynistic views and male-supremacy content online, we fail women all over again. Reports of gender-based violence seem to be daily occurrences here. News outlets rarely go a week without reporting multiple stories of gender-based violence, stories so horrifying that it is sickening to know these reflect only a small percentage of this epidemic.

My heart breaks for these women, what they are forced to go through and how often they are expected to relive it. It is deeply unfair that they are constantly retraumatised, so often do not get the aftercare and support they need and were not protected in the first place. It should not be a burden to be a woman, yet this country makes it so and, sadly, there is no safe place to be a woman. Women in every corner of this country have experienced gender-based violence. In my constituency, the Donegal Domestic Violence Services organisation gets five to six new calls every week from people seeking access to its services. The organisation says it works with "an average of 100 families each month to offer support with court, child access, accessing homeless supports and providing emotional one to one support for victims of domestic abuse".

On multiple occasions in this Chamber, I have raised the fact that the Donegal Rape Crisis Centre has had to apply for funding from the RTÉ toy show appeal to enable it to reduce the age of access to its services from 14 to 12 because of the high demand for services for younger people. This year, the centre will receive €16,000 from the appeal for therapies for 12-to-18-year-olds affected by the trauma of sexual violence. What happens if the toy show goes on to somewhere else? Will this all stop?

It is devastating that in County Donegal, children as young as 12 are now contacting the centre to report incidents of sexual violence. In many cases, the offending party is of a similar age. This shows that not only is there a rise in the number of young people experiencing sexual violence but also a rise in the number of young people perpetrating sexual violence. This is incredibly upsetting. We need to talk directly to our young boys and men about this situation because this problem lies with them. We cannot continue to put this burden on women. The responsibility lies with us men to deal with it.

I agree that this issue can be addressed to some extent through our education system but I do not believe this approach alone will adequately tackle the issue. We focus so often here solely on policy and legislation yet forget the most important step - implementation. This House is very good at this as well. Many TDs have called for this issue to be addressed in the classroom, but if we were to look at the new SPHE specification, we would see that many issues such as gender equity, gender stereotypes, sexual imagery online, unhealthy and abusive relationships, setting and respecting healthy boundaries, seeking, giving and receiving consent, the influence of popular culture and the online world and the influence of pornography on young people's understanding, expectations and social norms in relation to sexual expression are already a part of the curriculum. What exactly, then, are we calling for?

We cannot vaguely state that addressing this problem is the responsibility of schools. We need to be active and analytical in addressing this issue. We all have a role to play in addressing gender-based violence. We should be asking how this curriculum is being used and taught. Can one class taken once a week counter the hours of misogynistic content young boys are seeing on social media every day? Can anything? Why does the Government refuse to demand transparency from social media companies about their algorithms, which we know are contributing to this rise in misogyny?

We all need to hold ourselves accountable here and look much deeper if we are serious about tackling gender-based violence. We must do more than talk and make the right noises here in the House. We must actually ensure that actions are put in place to make the tackling of gender-based violence does happen. We must move beyond dealing with these issues in the classroom. They must be dealt with everywhere, including in the workplace, in the social environment and right across the board.

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