Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats)

In the 1990s, I worked in London at a domestic violence project to support Irish women in my job in a school completion programme. Every single year, we supported children who were growing up in families where domestic violence was an everyday occurrence. My doctoral research found that the number of young people who left school before the leaving certificate was due to violence in the home. I interviewed a number of students at a time. Now, in my constituency, people come in every single week, telling me the dire straits that they are in. For all of my working life, this issue has come up. It is not going away. In fact, it is getting worse. We need to make sure that we are doing everything that we can. It is about providing refuge spaces, but it is also about preventing refuge spaces from ever needing to be used.

Men need to be educated that it is out of order to lift their hands and treat women the way that they are doing it. That needs to be called out. Every person working with children needs to have that trauma-informed way of ensuring that they are able to explain to children of both genders why this is out of line. Every agency needs to be able to deal with it, to ask people if they are okay and how they can help. We need men to call it out for other men. This mentality that it is behind doors and all that stuff that I would love to say is old-fashioned is not, because it is still happening. It needs to be called out.

In my constituency, 70% of public order and criminal damage incidents in Ballyfermot and Cherry Orchard are linked to domestic violence. We have 1,100 child welfare cases remaining unallocated, leaving vulnerable children without help and in silence. I ask the Minister to do everything he can. We will keep talking about this until we never have to talk about it again, not because we are being silent but because it is finished.

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