Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It says a lot, in my view. The Minister of State also referred to the case of the DPP v.Doherty, where Charleton J in his 2020 judgment stated, "Harassment was made an offence by s 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997." That is a fact. The judgment went on to state, "Before that time, those whose lives were affected by harassment, or as it is commonly called stalking". That is used then as evidence to say that the terms are interchangeable. That is the opinion of one person - a man - who took a subjective view and thought the words were interchangeable. I would suggest it was unlikely he was ever stalked so perhaps he did not understand the seriousness of the comparison. The victims with whom we have been dealing do understand the seriousness of that comparison, however, and would not use those terms interchangeably. Again, I think the argument is quite weak and does not serve to explain properly the Department's reluctance to this.

The response goes on to state that it is the view of the Government "that the harassment offence works well". Works well for who? It is not working well for the victims. It is not working well for women. We are very clearly saying today that we want the Government to listen to women. It does not work well. I can only assume that is the opinion of the author of this piece of paper but it is not the opinion shared widely in this Chamber-----