Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator Keogan's sharing of her story sums up and brings into this Chamber just how invasive and frightening it can be, so I thank her for that. I commend my Fianna Fáil colleagues on bringing forward this important legislation. I commend the bravery of Una Ring and Eve McDowell in sharing their stories and speaking of their horrific experiences. There is no doubt that coming forward and creating the lobbying of Stalking Ireland is advancing the case. It is right we start to parse down that sense of entitlement others have to interfere with the free movement and living of another individual as a means of control and aggression. There is no other way to interpret it. The Senator is absolutely right that harassment does not go anywhere near describing what this could be and the experience of this for people.

Prosecutions for stalking, under the guise of harassment, have repeatedly failed to hit the bar and we have a very low number of prosecutions for that reason. We take it that stalking is a way down the road toward what can be the inevitable consequence, that being the homicide of an individual. Yesterday morning, I listened to Newstalk as the outcome of its recent survey on women and their sense of safety at night was talked about. The shocking result that 90% of women were uncomfortable being out alone after dark is an appalling statistic. In that discussion, it was said that the biggest fear men have is that women will laugh at them. As someone who has been a counselling psychologist and counselled men coming through domestic violence and being the victims, that is not the only fear that some men have of women, but the real issue talked about yesterday was that the biggest fear women have is that they will be killed.

In 2019, Women's Aid published a report on a legacy of loss to femicide, which showed rather frightening statistics. Since 1996, when Women's Aid started collating its figures, 230 women have died violently, including 16 children who were killed alongside their mothers. Almost two thirds of the women were killed in their own homes. One hundred women were murdered by their current or ex-partner, another 20 women were killed by a male relative, and 37 were killed by men who were known to them. In the murder-suicide cases, of 21 of these, it was a current or ex-partner of the victim.

We need to take very seriously that women live in the fear that their lives will be ended by this individual. Calling it stalking and having a serious penalty attached to that is very important. It is incredibly important we have that on our Statute Book and that the Garda and all services recognise just how serious it is. It is unacceptable that, as you read the reports and the victims' experiences, people feel that when they first talk about it, it is dismissed, said to be just a bit of attention and their experience is minimised. Bringing it forward and having it on the Statute Book as a stand-alone offence frames in all our minds that we should take seriously that repeated unwanted attention can very often lead to something significantly more sinister. It is unacceptable that women, in particular, live in fear of their lives and that any other person could exhibit that level of control and aggression. Stalking is an extremely aggressive act. I commend the Senator and there is absolute support from the Fine Gael group in bringing this forward.