Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I listened carefully to the Minister of State's point about the out-of-hours service. It points to an issue at the heart of the difficulty with our law on domestic violence, which is that it operates at the intersection of criminal and civil law. Having practised criminal law, I am familiar with the on-call judge system which operates for criminal cases but, as we discussed on the last occasion, a problem with the current enforcement of domestic violence is that very little is prosecuted under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act or under criminal law relating to assault.The 2014 Garda Inspectorate report, which was critical of the policing of domestic violence generally, raised concerns about high numbers of call-outs but low numbers of arrests. Therefore, it seems that gardaí are leaving it up to victims. I do not want to denigrate gardaí, who are doing difficult and important work in policing domestic violence, but a practice has arisen in the criminal justice system where it is effectively up to victims to be prosecutors by taking actions through the civil courts for barring and safety orders when criminal proceedings could actually be brought. It is not embedded in practice in civil applications to use an emergency or out-of-hours service. Whether that takes a legislative provision of the sort that we are tabling or there is another way of doing it, there needs to be a clear route of access for victims to get emergency protection during non-court sitting hours.