Holly Cairns (Cork South-West, Social Democrats)

This case highlights yet again why women rarely feel safe when they are out at night and why we do not jog or run when it gets dark, why we tightly grip keys when we walk, why we rarely wear headphones so we can be alert to sounds around us and why we are hyper vigilant about men walking behind us when we are alone. It is because nowhere is safe.

Violence against women is an epidemic in our society. Every day in court and crime reports we read of horrific cases involving women who have been beaten, sexually assaulted, raped or murdered. We know some of their names, the hugely courageous women who have spoken out like Bláthnaid Raleigh and Natasha O'Brien. Too often, in the absence of high-profile cases, there is a lack of political focus on this issue. The grim reality is the 52% of women in Ireland have experienced sexual violence. That is more than 1 million people. That is probably an under-reporting. What is being done about it?

It seems like pervasive levels of violence against women are something we are somehow just supposed to accept and tolerate as the price of being a woman. The Government has done some work in this area and I welcome the new agency Cuan that has been set up to tackle gender-based violence but why has progress on the basics been so slow? How are there still nine counties in Ireland without a women's refuge? How are women's counselling notes still at risk of being used in trials for rape and sexual assault? How is there still uncertainty about whether offences like stalking and coercive control can be included in a planned domestic violence register? How is toxic and abusive content aimed at demeaning, threatening and humiliating women allowed to proliferate online? I could go on and on but I am running out of time.

We need an emergency response. We need this to be treated like the epidemic that it is. Today is international day for the elimination of violence against women. Will the Government ban the use of counselling notes from courtrooms? When will refuge spaces be provided in every county?

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