Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

I begin by acknowledging the presence of all those in the Visitors Gallery. They are all very welcome. I thank Deputy Carthy and Sinn Féin for bringing Victims of Sexual Violence Civil Protection Orders Bill 2025. It is fitting that we are discussing it on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I also acknowledge every woman who has survived domestic, sexual or gender-based violence who has ever had to walk into these halls and ask the State to care. They should not have had to do that, and it is unfortunate that so many still do. That in itself tells a story about the country we are for survivors of abuse.

There continues to be something deeply wrong in how we respond to violence against women in Ireland. I do not mean just in the policies or the funding gaps, but in the national numbness that has settled around us. A numbness that lets us accept the unacceptable, every single day. I decided to do a quick skim through the headlines of today's newspapers - not any real research, just a glance. Straight away, three cases of the most extraordinary, sickening violence perpetrated against women were in the headlines. One woman was set alight after being doused in petrol in a morning attack at a Dublin house. A woman in Leixlip was seriously injured after being assaulted by her ex-partner, who then set fire to her home before taking his own life. A 55-year-old man was found guilty of murdering his 75-year-old mother by strangling her in her own home. These are headlines in our newspapers in the last 24 hours.

I say this with no exaggeration - the courts are absolutely heaving with cases like this. You can sit in any courtroom any day of the week and you will find men before the courts for acts of violence that should stop a country in its tracks, but they do not anymore. We have become so used to reading these stories that we simply absorb them and move on as if we just expect stories like this to come on after weather reports and as if this level of violence is the natural order of things. It is not normal. It should never be seen as acceptable.

What is also not acceptable is how hard this country makes it for women to escape abuse. The walls are closing in on them tighter and tighter. Only recently, I raised with the Minister the experience of a group of extraordinary survivors who came to the audiovisual room to tell us about their time in domestic violence refuges. These women had been terrorised, controlled, beaten and isolated - women who survived because they had been given the time and space to heal. Why were they here two weeks ago? They are fighting cuts to refuge accommodation. Women are now being told they get 12 weeks - 12 weeks - to rebuild their life. I found it genuinely horrifying, and I know colleagues here did as well, that women who have already survived more than most of us could ever imagine are forced to come into our Parliament to plead for the bare minimum for those who will come after them. They do not have the luxury of moving on and enjoying the rest of their lives; instead they are fighting to make sure the next woman - and they know there will be a next woman - escaping her home is not abandoned after three months. That is a State-created desperation. Women who have had to survive so much are trying to endure just that little bit more so that women who come after them do not have to.

That is where the Bill before us today meets the reality outside these walls, not just for women who have experienced sexual violence, but all kinds of violence. The truth is that the justice system is not working for survivors. It is not working in the courts, in the timelines, in the accommodations or in the culture that we have created in our country. Right now, even where a court finds that an offence of sexual violence has been committed, the person who has lived through that abuse can still be left to navigate separate legal processes to secure ongoing protection. This Bill recognises that gap and seeks to close it. It creates a legal route for the courts, once they have found that an offence of sexual violence has been committed under our sexual offences and trafficking laws, or the common law offence of rape, to grant a civil protection order for the complainant. It says that when the courts recognise the harm, they should also be empowered, there and then, to put a protective barrier in place for the person who has been harmed.

A report by the National Women’s Council last year, a report funded by the Department of Justice itself, laid out a brutal truth. Survivors of domestic and sexual violence in Ireland must navigate three separate legal systems - criminal, family, and child protection. These systems do not speak to each other. They do not acknowledge each other’s decisions. They place the entire burden of communication on the victim. Imagine giving evidence in a criminal trial against the man who hurt you, who attempted to destroy you, and the very same day trying to negotiate access arrangements in a civil court where none of that evidence is automatically recognised. Imagine being expected to be your own case manager for the State, carrying trauma between jurisdictions because the system does not seem bothered to connect itself.

Ellen O’Malley-Dunlop, one of the report’s authors, put it even more clearly. The system needs to be rebuilt around victims, not around bureaucracy, tradition or the convenience of the State. It requested mandatory training for everyone - judges, gardaí, solicitors and court staff. It recommended a wraparound support system through every stage of a case. It also included changes to the in camera rule so victims can speak to the people who actually support them. This is a justice system that acts like it actually wants survivors to survive. These are not radical demands; these are the basics of a functioning, humane State. This Bill is one practical step towards that kind of system - making sure that when a court has recognised sexual violence, it can also provide real, enforceable civil protection, without sending the survivor back into another maze of separate proceedings or putting their life in danger.

That is why I will be supporting this Bill, and any other proposal that forces us to move - really move - towards meaningful action for women who have endured extraordinary violence at the hands of their abusers. The truth is, and I will continue to say it on this floor, that women in Ireland are being terrorised in their homes and the State meets that terror with paperwork. Women are escaping with their children and we meet their bravery with a 12-week deadline. Women are walking into multiple courtrooms at once and we hand them the burden of stitching together a system we designed to be separate. We owe those women safety. We owe them time. We owe them a justice system that does not retraumatise. We owe them a country that refuses to become numb to their suffering.

If we are serious about believing survivors, then we must change the systems that continue to fail them. Not in speeches and photocalls, but in funding, in refuge spaces, in courtrooms and in every decision we take in this House, with a full recognition that the absolute antithesis of justice is the retraumatising of victims that happens in court rooms every single day. I am proud to support this Bill. I urge every Member in the House to do so, because if we cannot protect women in their homes, then no part of this Republic can honestly call itself safe.

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