Máire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Céad míle fáilte to all those in the Gallery, who are back again. I thank sincerely an Teachta Coppinger for bringing this Bill to the Dáil on Second Stage. Her dedication to survivors is quite clear in the legislation she authors and this should be recognised. I cannot say the same for the Government. To block this proposal is unsettling and one questions why. Due process, yes indeed, but as many of us will outline, due process can be achieved without tearing and ripping apart people's, in this case mostly women's and girls', private thoughts and private spaces. Why is the Minister of State saying that a well worded, well researched and well overdue Bill needs to wait at least another 12 months?

As Sinn Féin's junior spokesperson on domestic and gender violence, I meet with many survivors who are all highly critical of the practice and legality of their counselling session notes being used in court settings. They universally described feeling violated and revictimised by the seizure of their private thoughts via their therapy notes. One woman whose abuser pleaded guilty immediately upon his arrest still had to wait two years before his sentencing hearings, and her counselling notes during those two years could have been subject to use in sentencing, even though there would be no trial. It does not make sense. There is no requirement that survivors be notified of their use so this woman would have been unexpectedly confronted by this in a sentencing hearing and the preparator gaining access to her intimate thoughts via those notes. She was so afraid of this likelihood that she decided to forgo seeking therapy all together until after the sentencing. She told me she felt severe retraumatisation by the justice system.

These survivors are often subject to victim blaming tactics from defence lawyers and allowing access to counselling notes further perpetuates this practice. Survivors need to feel secure that their healing journey is truly private and that therapy is a safe space for them to be completely honest, raw and open. This is the entire point of therapy. No one can progress without that total honesty to themselves in a safe space. As a psychiatric nurse, I know the pathway when I am referring constituents who come to me with this trauma. Recently a teenager, just gone 18, had trauma for several years in the context of being groomed for violation. Anyhow, we will not go into that here. I was telling her the pathway to counselling, what she should expect and all that sort of stuff but in the back of my mind there was always the niggle regarding whether I might be sending her down a road that could be more traumatic than what she had been talking to me about.I am very protective of her yet I know she needs to offload in a very safe space, to be, as I said, herself and to be able to speak freely. In the back of my mind, though, is this niggle about whether I might be allowing the perpetrator further sadistic-type gratification if he, and it usually is a he, were to get hold of such counselling notes. It is a question that makes me pause sometimes, and I should not have to do it and neither should any of the victims who seek help to survive. It is long overdue that we would eradicate the fear our justice system is imposing on brave survivors. Let us recognise counselling notes as a private and therapeutic space rather than as evidence.

The Minister of State outlined the violence against women and girls and so much that needs to be done, including so much legislation, by this Government and us as legislators. Deputy Coppinger has given the Government an almost perfect Bill. We are here to discuss it, amend it and do what needs doing to it, but we are not here to wait 12 months for it to happen. We need Valerie's law, Jennie's law, and child protection, but again we have been waiting and waiting. In the meantime, I am getting updates from Factiva every Monday of every case where a woman or a girl has been attacked or where there has been sentencing. It is growing in volume. Every Monday on Factiva, I am getting pages and pages of it. The service searches the Internet, the courts and everything. This type of crime just seems to be growing.

The attitude of young men is quite frightening. There is also the attitude of the contagion taking place, as we said about Ballymena and Larne, and about our own places in Dublin, including in Dublin 8, where young men are on the rampage. We need them by our side, as was said. We need men and boys too. There has to be more we can do in this regard, but it all seems to be waiting and waiting. I do not think we, them, boys, men, girls and women, have that time. I urge the Minister of State, therefore, to complete these actions sooner. It is a question of respect and care. Do we as a society actually respect survivors who often risk everything to come forward to seek justice? Do we care about the welfare of our fellow human beings? If we decide we do respect survivors and do care for them and for our society, we must ban the use of counselling notes in court settings in a robust manner that can withstand legal challenge.

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