Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. She has pressing matters to deal with so I thank her for taking my Commencement matter. She is probably as shocked as me at the revelations from the internal Garda investigation into the cancellation of domestic violence 999 calls. When I got wind of it, I got really upset because I sit on the joint policing committee in Clare and we have seen domestic violence figures greatly increase during the Covid pandemic. We all know that existing supports badly need extra infrastructure and funding. According to the internal investigation, calls are being treated with a lack of empathy or are not being responded to. Calls that are responded to are not properly documented or followed up on and the cancellations have had an effect on the collection of important data and statistics on domestic violence, which is a huge issue on every level of our society. Some 3,120 domestic violence calls were marked as cancelled. There were valid reasons for cancelling one third of those, but that was not the case with the other two thirds. It is just not good enough.

We need to look at why this happened in the first place and what is needed to ensure that it does not happen again. Are additional resources needed? Do members of the Garda need extra training so they know how to show empathy? A person in a domestic violence situation is very disempowered because he or she has put up with it in the first place. It takes a lot of courage to pick up the phone to lodge a complaint. Often, that happens at the very tail end of a long history of emotional and physical violence. Much mental anguish, disempowerment and lack of self-value comes with domestic abuse, so when someone is making that call the last thing he or she needs is somebody who is flippant, does not show empathy or does not follow up. It is great the Garda held the internal investigation but it has highlighted some serious issues. Those issues need to be rectified. I hope the Minister of State can answer some of the questions that have arisen. What do we need to do about this issue and about the greater issue of increasing levels of domestic violence?