Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome. I am delighted to follow on from the previous three speakers and support what they have said. I think it is fair to say that we will have unanimity on this issue in the House. Domestic violence is a serious local and national problem. Violence in the home is almost exclusively committed against women and children, though not totally. I have been working with COPE in Galway and have run fund-raising events, including coffee mornings, for National Women's Day. When I think of what the women in COPE have to do so that they are not identified, it is phenomenal. For example, if we had a photographer there, they could not have their photographs taken in case the partners of the women they were helping recognised them.

Those women have taught me what I know about this issue. Some of the women who came to those coffee mornings were victims of domestic abuse and had suffered, as had their children. Women and children are frequently vulnerable because they depend on a partner for money and shelter. Senator O'Donovan asked a woman why she had not left an abusive relationship. Sometimes they cannot leave because, first, they have nowhere else to go and, second, they have no money. They are completely dependent. As Senator O'Donovan also said, they still have a grá for the person involved in the abuse.

No matter what, people enter relationships, including marriages, with the greatest intention of making them work, despite the fact that there could be grave problems with a partner. Dependence and lack of respect is at the core of this issue. We must take this on board. Senator O'Keeffe said that 18 women every day go for help. According to Safe Ireland, 3,000 children were helped in 2011.

The way the State has treated women over the years has been less than commendable, and it will take a long time to shake that record off completely. We are making some amends with the Magdalen laundries women, and the same applies to those affected by symphysiotomy. Yesterday, however, an Oireachtas committee held hearings and ruled against a request by women who have had abortions who wanted to tell their stories, in camera, about why they had to choose abortion. The committee said it did not want to hear those women. That is appalling. What have we learned? It took 40 or 50 years of abuse before we listened. I am glad of this opportunity to tell the Minister of State that the Joint Committee on Health and Children ruled against that matter. The Minister of State might bring that to the attention of the Minister for Health. Women who have had abortions have told me how voiceless and invisible they are. Perhaps they, too, have been victims of domestic violence.

I would like to cite some local, up-to-date statistics about Galway. In Galway city and county last year, 600 women and their children experienced domestic abuse. They were provided with support through refuge and outreach services. Some 86 of those women were accompanied to court to avail of legal protection. While that assistance is wonderful, it is an example of the scale of the problem in one county alone. COPE's refuge in Waterside House was unable to accommodate 214 women with 319 children due to lack of space. Those families were offered referrals to other refuges. The nearest refuges to Galway are in Athlone, Limerick, Castlebar and Ennis. It is not always a realistic prospect for victims in crisis to leave their homes and all their supports to travel by bus to a strange city with which they have no connection. COPE Galway covers the city and county areas but also accepts referrals from other appropriate areas, for instance, if a woman has been tracked by her abusing partner to a local refuge and then needs to access safety away from the perpetrator.

Safety orders are welcome and it is also helpful that the Minister, Deputy Shatter, has signed into law a provision whereby the protection victims would have in other countries will now be replicated in their current country of residence. However, it is not helpful that cohabiting partners do not have protection, so that aspect should be examined.

I have been stunned by one statistic, which is that 60% of women who experience abuse in this country do so before the age of 25.

This tells us these are young women. Something must be done in this regard. In his summing-up, the Minister of State might address what can be done. A subject called relationships and sexuality education, RSE, forms part of the social, personal and health education, SPHE, curriculum. That letter "R" stands for relationships and healthy relationships must be built among the young people. One must describe what is a healthy relationship and what it is like to be respected as otherwise, there will never be equality and the culture of domestic violence will continue.