Máire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I would like to greet the survivors of domestic, intimate partner, sexual and gender-based violence in the Gallery as well as those at home. Some of you may not be able to pursue justice through our legal system for myriad reasons. We see you and we stand with you always.

Every one of us knows a victim of crime in this very broad category, including behaviour which might not previously have been recognised as coercive control, revenge porn and marital rape. Consider that every single person in Ireland knows a victim. They are our friends, neighbours, family members and colleagues. There are more legislative means we can and will employ to help them, but perhaps the most important is to undertake a complete shift in culture and mindset. We can enact as many laws as we want, and we have, but that has not shifted the dial.

Let us face facts. Until we acknowledge that Irish society actively facilitates this abuse and attitudes, and has done for centuries, nothing will change. Ireland is experiencing high volumes of reports of intimate partner violence at truly alarming rates. Our society must adapt to achieve the eradication of this violence and the demeaning attitude towards women and girls which is spreading via disgustingly misogynistic online discourse.

Instead of knowing popstars by their first names, we now know survivors and victims, the Aislings, the Sophies, the Natashas, the Nikitas and so many more. We know others by the legislation named after them, such as Jennies's law and Valerie's law. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's recent report on public perceptions of domestic violence show that our young boys and men are developing alarming attitudes to women in a break with their older counterparts. This should set off alarm bells for all of us, and we must all be leaders and shoulder the responsibility of changing our society for the better.

One way we could do this is by exploring a ban on strangulation pornography. Recent research published by the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute director, Ruth Breslin, indicates that our young people are presenting themselves at accident and emergency departments with strokes, seizures and brain injuries due to acts seen in extreme strangulation porn. It is free, heavily promoted and easily accessible online by anybody with a connected device.

Let me be clear. There is no truly safe way to strangle somebody. Videos on how to breath play safely, which sounds innocuous, are being normalised. We need hard-hitting messages to reach our men and boys who start accessing porn by the age of 11. This is not breath play. There is nothing playful about it. There is reason to be alarmed. We have seen a fivefold increase in a single decade of strangulation sex. It has grown rapidly from niche to mainstream because pornography is normalising it as part of sex.

Such horrific depictions of extreme aggression effectively become our people's sex education. Consensual discussion is welcome, but is undermined by porn and, tragically, easy access to violent porn is grooming our boys into being unwitting sexual perpetrators. Girls curious about sex believe strangulation is a part of intimacy to which they must submit.

I have had these conversations with girls who have been frightened and disturbed. The definition of intimacy is skewed completely by strangulation. Strangulation is identified by An Garda Síochána as a significant factor for homicide among women, but even non-fatal strangulation carries dangerous outcomes, including acquired brain injuries, seizures, paralysis and psychological impacts. Strangulation is one of the most common causes of stroke in women under 40 years of age. We should explore a complete ban on strangulation porn in Ireland, as done elsewhere, along with drastically changing public perceptions of women and girls.

This is a rising emergency in Ireland due to depictions of harmful behaviour which are clearly adversely affecting thousands of young people across Ireland. For the sake of us all, of us we must wholly reject the disrespectful and violent discourse being spread in many online forms and instead rapidly adopt a culture of 100% intolerance. Let us be known globally known as a society that will not tolerate this.

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