Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Safe World Summit 2018 took place in Dublin this week. The organisers, contributors and speakers all deserve our applause. One of the main challenges facing the world is the extent and impact of violence against women and children. Ireland has come an incredibly long way. We have criminalised domestic violence in the Domestic Violence Act 2018. Now, domestic violence is treated as a much greater crime than violence against a stranger. For the first time, we have a robust legislative foundation that recognises and responds to the dangerous patterns of control, domination, inequality and psychological abuse within the home. Thanks to the Act, the barriers victims encounter are breaking down, but some remain. We need to consider how to help victims in bad situations to get out and be free before matters turn more sinister. There are services and supports, but not enough, especially in terms of housing. We need to consider how we listen to and help victims after they have suffered.

According to the Irish Probation Journal, sentence lengths in assault cases range from a fortnight to half a year whereas sentence lengths in theft cases can range from one month to nine months. That is unrealistic. If we fail the victims, we are letting them down. We need to help them and ensure that, instead of silencing them, we encourage them to speak out. Yesterday, Ms Noeline Blackwell, the chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, told The Irish Timesthat information on how judges decided sentences in rape and sex abuse cases needed to be published to ensure that survivors understood the process and were not discouraged from reporting. We do not have sentencing guidelines and should not tell the Judiciary how to do its job, but we must ensure that it gives support to victims.