Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I certainly welcome the Bill. It is long overdue. As the Minister stated, the Bill will enable Ireland to ratify the Istanbul Convention which was signed on 5 November 2015. I understand that much of what enables us to ratify the convention has been included in the Domestic Violence Act 2018. That was one of the greatest achievements of this House since I entered it. I welcome this. I will not speak a lot on it. We are very much on the one page in regard to the heinous crimes of domestic violence and sexual violence. We have to do everything we possibly can to protect women from all forms of violence and to prevent, prosecute, and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence. I hope we will continue to do that.

The enabling of international co-operation in this Bill is particularly welcome and necessary. We also need to have a much more integrated approach between North and South. I would very much advocate an all-island policy on domestic and sexual violence because I cannot see how we can really address the problem without such an approach. I spoke about this at Stormont recently. Adopting good practices from both jurisdictions would allow us to tackle the problem in a more meaningful way.

Obviously, we can enact and ratify all we like, but unless we have the resources to back up the actions, we are going to fail women, children, and men who suffer the crime of domestic violence. I encourage the Minister to ask the Government to look again at the resources available and at the cuts being made at present, including those in my area in respect of organisations such as the Mayo Rape Crisis Centre and Mayo Women's Support Services. There is work they cannot do because they do not have the resources.

I ask the Minister to come to the Seanad in the new year to review the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act in order that we might look at how much of it has been implemented, how much training has been done, what further training is required and what resources need to be allocated.