Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Today I want to talk about the conference I attended yesterday along with my Seanad colleague, Senator McFadden. It was held in Westport, County Mayo. I commend Safe Ireland for such a wonderful conference on domestic violence and for holding it in Mayo. One of the reasons it did so was that it launched a report on Mayo with regard to combating domestic violence. I will speak briefly about two of the speakers who attended the conference. The first is Ryan Hart from Britain, of whom many Senators have heard. His mother and sister were killed by his father. He and his brother Luke have written a book on it, Remembered Forever. What he spoke about in particular was the eulogising of his father who died by suicide just after the death of his mother and sister. He said this has to stop. We see so much of it in this country, where women and children are killed and suddenly the person who killed them is eulogised and all kinds of excuses are made, such as being a great member of the GAA, going to Mass on Sunday or being a great community person. The reason I say all of this is that we need to do much more in this State. I have asked for the Minister to come to the House to evaluate the legislation we passed earlier this year. It is hugely important that we do so. I do not believe adequate resources are being put in place to underpin the legislation. The conference also heard from Detective Superintendent Gordon McCreadie of the Scottish police. He spoke about the many good practices in Scotland to combat domestic violence.

The Safe Home Safe Communities programme has been launched in Mayo. The idea behind it is to have prevention, intervention, response, recovery and measurement. It is hugely important that we have these things. I will speak about it at length later. This is crucial because the funds for Safe Ireland are not guaranteed and the staff are on protective notice. We are starting our 16 days of action to oppose violence against women and it is not good enough. Tusla is not allocating the money. It is administering the money but it is not dishing it out. That money needs to be released. We cannot have a precarious situation where Safe Ireland is not being adequately funded to do the job it needs to do. I am sure I will speak about this during the 16 days of action on opposing violence against women.