Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte ar ais roimh an Aire. I thank the Minister for her time. I know it has been a long afternoon for her but I also know how significant and important all of these issues are to her and how willing she is to be here to engage with us in the Seanad.

The national outpouring of grief, sympathy and support following the murder of Ashling Murphy did not just reflect anger and shock at that appalling murder but also highlighted the awareness that there is something deeply and fundamentally wrong in Irish society, where violence against women is endemic. That murder is the tip of an iceberg of misogyny, which is pervasive in society because men, the practitioners of ingrained prejudice against women, are in control of society by and large. Within hours of the murder of Ashling Murphy while she was out jogging, a woman who regularly ran along the canal path said that she also jogged in the local forest and that she was not afraid of anything in the forest except the men she saw while jogging. To men, that comment might seem odd but it is not at all odd when you listen to women's experience of life in a male-dominated society, some of which have been shared here today, or when you reflect on the statistics in respect of violence against women and the sexism, verbal harassment, intimidation and violence women experience at the hands of men.

Women are not afraid of their surroundings; they are afraid of violent and abusive men. Why would they not be? The following information is frightening. More than 244 women have died violently since 1996. Some 18 children have died alongside their mothers and 152 women have been killed in their own homes. Some 87% of these women were killed by a man known to them while 13% were killed by a stranger. In almost all murder-suicide cases, 22 out of 23, the killer was the woman's partner. Femicide is the outworking of male attitudes to women across a broad canvas of views and behaviours, including rape, sexual assault, coercive control, intimate partner abuse, groping, commercial exploitation, everyday sexism, sexist trolling and catcalling. Most violence, abuse and coercive control and harassment of women by men goes unreported. In one of five cases of detected sexual violence reported, both the victim and the suspected offender were under 18 when the offence occurred. Women's Aid support workers in this State heard more than 30,000 disclosures of domestic violence, including coercive control.A total of 24,893 disclosures related to abuse against women and 5,948 to child abuse. Between March and December 2020, an average of 180 women and 275 children sought emergency accommodation every month. In the same period, 2,159 requests for refuge could not be met by the services.

The peculiar nature of the pandemic, with isolation and other restrictions, has made circumstances worse for many women. During the first six months of the pandemic, calls to women's refuge services showed that 19 new women and three new children called every day. Following the murder of Ashling Murphy, Womens Aid has called for zero tolerance for male violence against women. Safe Ireland has stated the murder must prompt a national response, while the National Womens Council has called for the issue of violence against women to be housed under one Department.

At the beginning March, the third State strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is due to be published. The Government must implement, resource and fund this strategy in full. Sinn Féin again calls on the Government to set up within the Department of the Taoiseach a domestic, sexual and gender-based violence policy and implementation unit. We need a firm commitment from the Government to implementing the recommendations from the independent study on familicide and domestic homicide reviews, which is due to be released shortly. We need better data on sexual, violent and gender-based crime in this State and the implementation of a State database for such crimes. We need to speed up the completion of the sexual violence survey, which is not due to be completed until 2023. These and many other measures are needed to eradicate the scourge of violence against women.

Much progress has been made on creating a just legal society where women and men can share equal space. This progress was made because women and men collaborated to ensure it would happen and, as other Senators have acknowledged, more often than not because women had to demand and fight for it. The same approach is needed to create a new society where misogyny, patriarchy and violence against women are a thing of the past.

As men, we have been encouraged to listen and, more important, to act. There would be no greater example of male privilege than if we came to the Chamber, said all the right things and then left and did not act. As my male colleagues have said, we need to call this out, but that is only one part of it. We need also to stop it. We need to stop wrapping ourselves in the comfort male privilege and a misogynistic society afforded to us as men. We need not just to say we are allies but to act as allies of women, and we need to do that in institutions such as this one as legislators. I hope we can legislate, in concert with the Minister, to end gender-based violence. Furthermore, we need to act when we leave this Chamber.

I cannot speak for the female politicians in this institution, but I have seen examples where women politicians have had their appearance or style of dress called into question, where they have been told to calm down. Senator Dooley spoke about a professional, but I have heard people in this House tell female political leaders to lower their voice or confront them in such a way. All that needs to end and to be called out and challenged. No matter what aspect of our lives it is in, we as men, alongside women, need to be proactive in challenging that.