Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome to the House. Everything in this country feels like a fight for women. This is not a fight that we should have to fight alone, but it often feels like we are. I know that men are there walking with us sometimes, but it always feels that we have to ask them to. It also feels that we ask Governments continuously to take action, as well as schools and society more generally. There are pockets of things going right, such as inter-agency response such as the Barnahus in Galway, which deals with sexual assault against children. That will be replicated around the country. However, it is beyond time for national response on this. The programme for Government was the first time that "epidemic" was ever used to describe domestic violence and violence against women, but we are a couple years on now. There is a list of legislation that the Minister is progressing on stalking, which we spoke about earlier. However, it also felt like a battle to get to this point on that. It took her death of Savita Halappanavar to bring us to the place that we are waiting in respect of abortion but we are still fighting. I see there has now been a death in Poland, which Senator Hoey mentioned, of Agnieszka T., again relating to abortion.When something seems to be fixed in one place, it seems to pop up somewhere else around the world. We have obligations here in that respect as well.

Much of the discussion about this subject must involve talking about Ashling Murphy because what happened has hit us all deeply. I think of her family all the time. I also think of the families of the 244 women killed in recent years. What must this be bringing up for the members of their families? Along with those 244 women, 18 children were killed alongside their mothers. This has an impact on whole communities. We should not even have to say that because each woman is an individual and we should act before each death happens. That is simply not happening to the extent that it should be happening.

Quite rightly, we talk a great deal about domestic violence. I wholeheartedly agree with Senator Clifford-Lee regarding maintenance and having a central collection point for maintenance payments. I know women, as I am sure the Minister does, who had to go back into court seven times. Eventually, they just give up. This issue derives from our long legacy of shaming lone-parent families and those who are unmarried or divorced. Why has action not been taken before now to deal with this issue? Nobody should have to be an advocate 24-7 for their own rights.

I agree with everyone who has spoken. Every woman here has, I would say, experienced incidents where they were victims. Not everybody wants to talk about it and not everybody in society should have to talk about it. Their rights should be enshrined in law and action should be taken anyway. The statistics show that a quarter of women have experienced violence, but I think it has gone much beyond that. When I was a member of Galway County Council, it was not even stated in the joint policing committee report how many incidents there were of sexual assaults, for example, until I raised it. Decades, if not generations later, we must still ask people if they have thought about the fact that women are experiencing crimes being perpetrated against them every day.

I return to the point about the children because it is critical. We talk about education a great deal, but in every school and every circle of friends, children are talking about Ashling Murphy. Children simply do not have the tools to be able to figure out what is going on in their society. I think of my daughter who came back from school and asked me about Ashling Murphy and the event I attended with a candle. I am not fully confident about the teaching of consent, not just in my daughter's school but in my son’s school as well. These are the future actors. I will not say victims because we must be careful to say that people are victims for the time when something has been perpetrated against them. After that, they are not. We are ensuring, through our justice system, that people are being retraumatised and brought back to that place of victimhood over and over. Every time we hear about a death, it is also happening to us.

Some good things are happening. The legislation being introduced by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Roderic O’Gorman, providing for time off in cases of domestic violence is a good thing, even though it should not be needed in the first place because nobody should have to take time off for this reason. I refer as well to all the legislation the Minister for Justice has undertaken to deliver. We also have our new Joint Committee on Gender Equality, which many of us sit on, and we will be examining this issue and ensuring that progress is made. That is our role.