Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

She only went for a run, Ashling Murphy. We have all been talking about it ever since her poor body was found. All of this hype will pass but Ashling's mother, father, sister, brother and other relations will have to live with their grief forever. It is really sad that we have been brought to this. I am the brother of eight sisters, the son of a wonderful mother, the husband of a wonderful and tolerant wife, and the father of a daughter. I have a daughter-in-law and two granddaughters. I cannot believe what I have heard here today. I have never been told by any of my sisters that they have been afraid to walk anywhere. I do not disbelieve what I heard, by the way. Senators should not get me wrong; I am horrified that we have arrived at this place in society where women cannot feel safe walking and where people feel they have to look over their shoulder to see who is coming behind them. I am actually horrified by it. I was walking behind a person on a corridor in this building the other day and I thought I should slow my pace slightly because I was getting too close. That is wrong. It is wrong in every sense of the word.

Many Members have spoken this afternoon. The only thing that came out of all of this for me is that I have to reappraise the way I live my life. Maybe the things that I once thought were funny are not so bloody funny after all. Maybe the people, particularly women, who stood in company with me down through the years and heard sexist jokes were not really laughing. Maybe they just felt they had to laugh. Maybe they felt intimidated by the company they were in at the time. Maybe they thought they had to be part of the gang.

In my time as president of the Teachers Union of Ireland, I was horrified by some of the stories I heard of 13-year-old kids engaged in sexual acts. I recall one of my colleagues saying that in the context of young girls in particular, it was not that they wanted to engage in the acts they were engaged in, it was that they thought they should because that was the norm. A principal spoke to me about wanting to introduce a proper sex education programme in his school. It was to be a proper programme that would explain consent, what is right and what is not. He came up against parents. The parents said he was not going to teach that to their kids. He told them he was quite prepared to try to work with them on it but, at the end of the day, it is something that has to be on the syllabus and has to be done. He met with massive opposition to any discussion whatsoever on sex. This is an issue for all of us in society today. We have to rethink the way we think about these things. Growing up as a young man in County Galway, there was only one sin. We were sent to confession every Friday and there was only one sin and that sin was sex. I do not blame the church or anybody else for that; it is just the way society was at the time.

I do not know how I will change my life. I do not know how I will find the courage to say to my male colleagues who send me a joke or tell me something that it is inappropriate and I really do not want to hear it any more. I do not know how I will do that. I will look to the women whom I know and love to maybe put a bit of smacht on me and change the way I live my life.

The case of Ashling Murphy is terrible; there is no doubt at all about that. We have heard stories this afternoon and ever since Ashling died about how difficult it is for women to live in this country and that is something we have to change. I do not know how we will change it. I have great faith in the ability of the Minister to bring forward legislation, but legislation is not worth diddly squat if we do not implement it. That starts from the ground up.

I spent several days as a juror in Limerick some years ago. Every day, the judge came in at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. and told us the case was adjourned for the day and to come back tomorrow. Five or six days into the trial, he told us the case was going ahead but the members of the jury were no longer required and he wanted to thank us. The juror sitting beside me asked what the hell the judge meant by saying we were no longer required, seeing as how we had been there for several days. We were told it was a case of rape and the perpetrator had pleaded guilty so there would be no trial; he would be sentenced and that was it. The juror told me that she was not going home until she saw who the fella was. I told her I would sit with her. The next thing, the defendant was brought into court. He was dressed in a white shirt, red tie, navy blue sports jacket, grey trousers and immaculately polished shoes. He looked like a person who just bought I do not know what. He looked well. He looked as if he was well-to-do. I looked at him and waited. We then found out the story behind the case. At 12 midday on O'Connell Street in Limerick city he grabbed a young woman, pulled her into an alleyway and raped her. He did that at midday. Please tell me how he could even think of such a thing at that time of the day.

There is a big lesson here for us all but I do not know how we will learn it. I could stand up here and say I have been reformed. I have been horrified and I have to look into my own self now and see how I can change who I am to be the sort of man who will not accept from my fellow men some of the misogynistic and sexist jokes that I once found funny. To the women I love, I apologise that I found them funny. To those in my company with other men who felt they had to laugh but really were not laughing, I apologise. There is nothing we can do to change what has happened but we can change what will happen going forward. I thank the Minister for her time. She has been very patient today.