Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. Like other Senators, I congratulate Senator Ruane on her considerable work on this very important topic over a period of time and on bringing this motion before the House today. I also want to quote my own party colleague, Senator Hoey, and to tell her that we are all thinking of her and her family at this time. As we all know, Senator Hoey spoke on this matter recently and I want to quote what she said. She said:

Too often when people are harassed, they feel they do not have the power or the support to report it, and even some who do report it are given inadequate support to work through it. There are students, and staff, across the country who have to share campuses with people who have harassed them, assaulted them, and continue to cause them great distress. We need to make consent training the norm in all places of education. However, the first conversation students have about healthy relationships and consent should not be at third level. We need to get talking about this issue at a much earlier stage in formal education.

We in the Labour Party fully support the motion brought forward this evening, particularly the provision regarding non-disclosure agreements. Given the very welcome return to campus living and college life, this is very timely and welcome. The conversation initiated by Senator Ruane today is about our need to highlight how important it is that those attending third level, whether staff or students, have the support to speak out should they become the victims of sexual assault or bullying. It is essential that their voices are not taken away from them at such a difficult time, which is what non-disclosure agreements try to achieve and what this motion tries to discuss and address.

We also acknowledge the proactive work being done in the sector, which I am sure the Minister knows about. I refer to, for example, University College Cork's bystander intervention programme which aims to highlight the danger of normalising and accepting abusive behaviour and, through education, to inform and empower programme participants to better understand their capacity to intervene as prosocial bystanders. Another example is the Start Here campaign in the National University of Ireland, Galway, which focuses on active consent and which is in run in conjunction with the Galway Rape Crisis Centre. This provides students and staff with resources on how to support someone who makes a disclosure.

In supporting this motion tonight, we must also acknowledge and, more importantly, learn from the recent research carried out by the Union of Students in Ireland through its 2020 national sexual experience survey. This revealed that 79% of college students who disclosed sexual misconduct, including rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, have told a friend about it. Some 29% of females, 10% of males and 28% of non-binary students reported non-consensual penetration by force or threat of force. Some 57% of females had experienced offensive remarks about their appearance, body or sexual activities. These findings should concentrate all of our minds on the need to have conversations such as the conversation we are having today but, like my colleague, Senator Hoey, has previously suggested, we need to have those conversations much earlier in our educational system.

A very important part of the conversation we are having here today relates to how we are going to fund urgently needed training for dedicated campus staff in how to deal with reports of sexual harassment and assault. It is vital that in talking about consent we also find ways to support victims through these situations when they arise. Funding must be prioritised by Government and the Minister. There must be avenues of support on campus now. As has been said by other speakers tonight, this issue is not exclusive to higher education. Right across Irish society, victims do not feel safe or empowered to report and perpetrators trade off that silence and experience, experiencing little or no consequences for their actions.Following what Senator McGreehan said, I take this opportunity to raise the RTÉ programme presented by Katie Hannon, "Women of Honour". The horrific treatment of female members of our Defence Forces through sexual harassment and bullying must be stopped, and the silence and power the perpetrators had over these women must be called out. I welcome the fact the Minister for Defence has agreed to meet the "Women of Honour" representatives and that he has agreed to an independent inquiry, but the terms of reference of that inquiry must include the experiences of these women and they must be consulted on those terms before it begins. I strongly suggest that PDFORRA and RACO, the Defence Forces representative organisations, should also be included in drawing up the terms of reference of this urgently needed inquiry. Is it any wonder, at a time we need additional members in our Defence Forces, with all that has gone on in the past, that only 7% of them comprise female members?

I reaffirm our support for the motion. The history of this country is littered with victims whose voices were silenced throughout their sexual exploitation and bullying. I was taken aback by what Senator Ruane said about how non-disclosure agreements allow people to move among different educational organisations, and I am sure the Minister has taken that very much on board. This is a reflection of what has happened in the past in this country, and the main issue I have taken from this debate is that we cannot allow this to happen again. Our third-level institutions must be free from this enforced silence, and if it has to happen, supports must be put in place urgently. No victims should be afraid to come forward; they must be supported at all times in the process, and any funding needed must be provided and forthcoming from the Minister and his Department.