Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and I commend her on her long-standing commitment to reform in this area. I know from many engagements with her on this issue just how much of a personal commitment she brings to the issue of domestic violence, to tackling it and to seeking to ensure better legal treatment of the victims and survivors of this appalling violence. I commend her on that. I welcome the Safe Ireland representatives and those in the Visitors Gallery who work in the area. I commend all those involved in working on this Bill. I and a number of others on the justice committee held extensive hearings on domestic violence and produced a report in 2014. I know some of the issues in the report have been addressed in this legislation.

This is a very welcome Bill and is a long-awaited codifying reform of the law on domestic violence, repealing and reforming as it does earlier legislation, including the Domestic Violence Act 1996. As the Minister said, the Bill is also necessary to enable us to ratify the very important Istanbul Convention. It is very welcome legislation. It is also welcome to see it being introduced in the Seanad. I thank the Minister for that also.

As others have done, I commend the bravery of those survivors and victims of domestic violence who have spoken out publicly, especially in recent years when we have seen a great deal of increased awareness around it. I welcome also the Minister's awareness raising campaign that she mentioned in her opening remarks. As she said, a huge amount of the issue around domestic violence relates to societal attitudes and myths around domestic violence. We need to tackle those through other means as well as through legislation.

Speaking at the Safe Ireland summit on domestic violence in the Mansion House last November, I was very struck by the bravery of those women who spoke out about their experience of domestic violence. They were very clear about the inadequacies of the legal system currently. At an earlier seminar at a 2015 launch of a Safe Ireland research document entitled The Lawlessness of the Home, we heard the stories of 13 individual women who had experienced appalling abuse at the hands of their partners. They also experienced very negative aspects of the criminal justice system in its legal response. It is important that we challenge societal attitudes and that we also address the inadequacies of the legal system. That is something that we are seeing being done in this important Bill.

Many have conducted research on the way in which domestic violence is regarded in society.There are those who have spoken about the phrase "domestic violence" as tending to trivialise or minimise the impact of this very serious violence and suggested that other phrases might be more appropriate, such as, for example, speaking of it as violence in intimate relationships. From extensive research, we are aware of the gendered nature of the violence and that it women tend to be much more likely to experience it. Recent statistics from Women's Aid show that there were 12,000 contacts with it in 2015. A recent EU survey on violence against women showed that 14% of women have experienced physical violence by a current or former partner. We know how prevalent the issue is. As Senator Kelleher has said, we know the extensive and sometimes fatal violence perpetrated on women and children in the home and we know the gendered nature of this violence.

I will turn to the inadequacies of the current law and criminal justice system. In one presentation before the Safe Ireland event in 2015, we heard of a woman who had been eight years before the courts. This involved 44 separate appearances on her part, all relating to issues of domestic violence. Senator Colm Burke has spoken of his own experience. Those of us who have worked in the family law courts are aware of the lack of joined-up thinking and connectedness. We are aware of child custody applications being heard by judges with no awareness of parallel proceedings on breaches of barring orders or maintenance applications. Unfortunately, all of these applications have tended to be dealt with in piecemeal fashion. I declare my own interest. Anyone who has practised in Dolphin House is aware of how utterly inadequate the facilities are. The Minister has addressed that. It is great to hear that Hammond Lane will be coming on stream in coming years. Many of us have taken instructions in fraught and awful cases in crowded corridors where there is not the space to deal with the harrowing emotions and personal circumstances individuals bring to the court.

I welcome the procedural provisions in sections 14 to 20 of the Bill, which aim to make the court process easier for victims and survivors. I welcome other aspects such as the live television link that will be provided for and also the provision around hearing the views of the child. Barnardos has made a submission on the Bill and has welcomed the recognition of the need to hear the views of the child.

I also welcome the substantive changes the Minister has spoken about in the Bill in terms of the extension of safety orders to those in intimate and committed relationships who are not cohabiting, namely, the removal of the six-month cohabitation requirement. The Minister has said she will bring forward an amendment on the removal of the cohabitation requirement, which I very much welcome. It is something that Women's Aid and others have looked for. I also very much welcome the new emergency barring order provision which is necessary to ensure we can implement the Istanbul Convention. All of these will give rise to real and substantial changes for victims and survivors.

I will turn to the issues of forced and child marriages which are addressed in sections 35 and 39 of the Bill. I welcome the new offence provided for in section 35. I give a particular welcome to section 39 because it is an issue I have worked on for some years and which I have spoken about with the Minister many times. The Minister may have been in the Seanad in 2014 to deal with this when former Senators Jillian van Turnhout and Katherine Zappone and I raised the issue of the need to ensure protection for children against coercion into marriage. We were very alarmed that between 2004 and 2014, 387 children were married in Ireland under the exemption provided for in the Family Law Act. That exemption will be abolished under section 39, a development I really welcome. There is currently no minimum age at which a child can seek an exemption from being allowed to marry. We know that 302 of the parties under 18 who got married in that period were girls. There were 33 applications for exemptions in 2015 alone. A significant number of children are continuing to marry in the State despite 18 being the nominal minimum age of marriage. I welcome this change, which we called for in 2014 and which the Minister undertook to examine at the time. The High Court had previously criticised it in 2013 so I welcome it has now come together in this important provision in section 39 which will make 18 absolutely the minimum age for marriage.

Will the Minister look at some of the recommendations made by Women's Aid in its submission on the Bill? It talks about the need to ensure that when granting a barring order, a court would consider the safety and well-being of any children of the relationship. It is an important recommendation to ensure more joined-up thinking and it comes back to the point about the need to ensure a better experience in the courts for victims and survivors of abuse. I welcome Women's Aid's suggestions on the amendment to the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act to ensure that a past history of domestic violence would be seen as an aggravating circumstance. There is a great deal more work to be done on the consideration of aggravating circumstances in hate crimes. That is another piece of work but is something that could be looked at, particularly for domestic violence, in the context of this Bill.

I will conclude by saying how much I welcome the Bill and how much I hope it will result in a change in approach to domestic violence whereby it will be taken extremely seriously - as, I know, the Minister takes it - across society in general. I also hope that there will no longer be evidence of the sort of attitude that one survivor of abuse described to me whereby other women in the playground of the school said to her "Sure it was only a slap." Unfortunately, that attitude, which she expressed very eloquently to me some years ago, is still prevalent. At the justice committee, a former colleague of ours, himself a victim of domestic violence, said how awful it is that women and children are still the people who have to leave the home while the perpetrator remains. This Bill will do a lot to tackle that situation. Together with the awareness campaign and changes in policing practice, it will result in a real sea-change in attitudes.