Tony Kett (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and the Bill to the House. The Minister must be congratulated on the speed with which he has brought the Bill before us because the issue was the subject of a court judgment just two months ago. It indicates the necessity to deal with this horrible crime which is part of our daily life.

When preparing for today, I was gobsmacked when I read some of the statistics. Senator Minihan referred to the fact that one in five will experience violence at some stage in their relationships. He also referred to the time of year which is now approaching. Another statistic I noted is that 83 women have been murdered in this country since the end of 1995, 54 of whom were murdered in their own homes, 37 by people they knew. As that is a horrendous statistic in anyone's language, it is essential to have tight legislation to deal with the problem. It is a problem we have been slow to come to terms with.

I recall listening earlier this year to the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy O'Donoghue, in his former capacity as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. He posed a question to his audience which for me captured the indifference in our attitudes towards domestic violence. He asked people to imagine if today's newspapers or television carried a story that a new risk threatened people, and that risk would challenge between 10% and 20% of the population. He said a large number of those affected would require hospitalisation and some would even die. Most of those affected would suffer for the rest of their lives and in a large number of instances children would be affected. He asked what the audience thought the response would be. Would we as a society do nothing about it? Would everyone say it was not their problem, it was not a matter for legislation, it was somebody's else's problem? Would the media run the story for a day, week or month? If a year on we still had done nothing about it, would there be a public outcry? He asked if it was not a fact that the risk was already among us in its ugliest manifestation, namely, domestic violence.

That captured for me the indifferent attitude we as a society have towards domestic violence. Thankfully, that attitude has been changing in recent times. Credit for that must go to the Taoiseach because when he went into office in 1997 one of the first things he initiated was the national steering committee. The focus of the national steering committee was to bring about a cohesive and multiagency approach to domestic violence. Eight regional committees were established to deal with the matter in a more cohesive and localised manner, which is a demonstration of the Government's changing attitude to this issue.