Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for the work she has been undertaking along with my party colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman. I also wish to congratulate the Labour Party, particularly Deputy Howlin and Senator Bacik, for its hard work over a long period in this area. I know they will all be speaking tomorrow and I look forward to it.

Two years ago I attended a convention on the centenary of women being granted the right to vote in Ireland. At the event were the granddaughters of Emmeline Pankhurst and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. I am sure many Senators will know Micheline Sheehy Skeffington. We took part in an exercise at the event, in which we raised a number of fingers to demonstrate how we rated the advancements that have been made in various aspects of gender equality. On the issue of violence, we all put up a fist because nothing has changed for us in the last 100 years when it comes to gender-based violence. I was going to speak about the fact that at the event, which was attended by approximately 200 people, I could count on one hand the number of men who were there. In that context, I was delighted when Senator Ward spoke about the importance of men getting involved in this work. I was going to comment on how shameful it is to need to have Taoiseach's nominees to bring some sort of gender balance to the floor of this Chamber, but if we also have men speaking about these issues, that will also advance things for all of us. I do not think the Minister mentioned it in her opening statement, but I would like her to speak to her Cabinet colleagues about the importance across all of the Ministries in terms of gender-based violence.

I spoke in the Seanad this morning on the importance of education. We are out of date by 20 years when we talk about coming into the 20th century in respect of sex education in schools. A survey of over 2,000 students that was carried out by NUIG and the Union of Students in Ireland earlier this year showed that just 15% of women and 20% of men in third level education were satisfied with the kind of sex education they had received in secondary school.We have to stop wrapping up religion with sex in this country. It is beyond time. In that survey, a secondary school boy said he was told by a religious teacher, who was clearly teaching sex education, that he would be better off looking at the cycle of the woman with whom he was engaged in intimate relations rather than using any form of contraception. That goes on into third level. Consent is lacking as part of that education programme and we cannot expect to see any advances at all unless we address this issue urgently. I ask the Minister to bring that to attention of her Cabinet colleague.

This is the first programme for Government to refer to domestic violence. The Minister has mentioned some of the things she is undertaking and I welcome all of them. Coercive control is now a crime and we saw the first prosecution earlier this month. There is also the domestic homicide review, the amendment of the Bill about which we were speaking earlier, and the implementation of a plan for refuge space.

Senator Currie also spoke about this but I would like to bring to the Minister's attention the importance of organisations and NGOs knowing how much funding they have. It is an incredibly difficult cause for an organisation or NGO to raise money for. They do not feel comfortable going out and asking the public for money for it in the same way they would with other things. As a society, we have to get more comfortable with calling out sexual violence but as a Government we also need to ensure we put funding in place to close that gap and make up that shortfall.