Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing some of the debate. I was tied up for other reasons. I will go back and listen to what was said. It is clear that quite horrifying personal stories have been told today, as was the case in the Dáil, of life experience in a culture that is quite chilling. I brought my daughter to the vigil because I wanted to stand with a sense of hope that somehow the world in which she will grow up will be transformed and changed in some way. I worked for several years as a counselling psychologist and a psychotherapist. I counselled people coming through domestic violence or after domestic violence, as well as perpetrators of domestic violence, so I felt I had an idea, a handle and an understanding of this issue but something about the sheer presence of people outside Leinster House that afternoon brought about different thoughts in me. I thought about the fact that I knew Nadine Lott. I have a very good friend whose sister-in-law was murdered by her partner. I know of other situations.I started counting them up. Of the ones that I did not encounter from a professional standpoint - maybe a person somehow wears the mantle of protection if he or she is there as the counsellor and supporter - I looked and thought "Hold on a minute, let's start counting here within our life experience and within the sphere of my friends and the people in my life." These violent experiences have touched our lives. It was the first time that I thought it is all around us. It is everywhere. I then started thinking about the things that I dismissed in my life. I found myself with a design team at one stage when I was chief executive of an organisation. The entire design team was male. We were about to spend €15 million and the lead architect, when he started the first meeting, said "You'll be taking minutes, won't you?" I had a male colleague, whom I later married, who turned around and said, "I don't think so."

That is clearly no comparison to what has been shared in this House, but it is an example of that assumption of subservience, of the place of women and the place they should automatically take. As a consequence, you have to be abrasive and aggressive and you have to confront and adopt a life that is about taking these things on one by one. We should not have to do that. We are then accused of being aggressive. I am thinking of some of the things I have got passionate or assertive about where I have been told that I was upset and needed to calm down. It is dismissive, once you assert who you are. If you do assert who you are, then you are a piece of work and a whole heap of words go with that. I have never counted that and have always just taken it on the chin. It is a little like the social media abuse we get as politicians. When I first spoke about it, the Garda in Terenure rang me to ask why I did not report it. I thought it was just something I had to take as part of the course of my life. It never occurred to me to report it because there is something in our psyche that says it is okay for us to be treated that way. We resent it, but we brace ourselves for it, or cushion ourselves for or against it.

I find the Women's Aid advertisement very powerful. It never comes on but I do not break down in tears and think that I love the phrase "the world's strongest women" because they are. There is something in that act that moves the locus of shame. Yet women have to carry the break-up of the family, including where the children will live, what they will do and whether they have a refuge to go to. They have to almost carry the responsibility when they are victims and not perpetrators. We have got to do a big piece on the perpetrator in our lives being where the shame stands. There is a piece of education that needs to start from birth. Women, when they are presented with the key to their door, as I was, are not taught how to hold it. There are things like that we should not ever have to do. I fear that the work is so great, it is almost overwhelming.

There is a list of exceptionally fine actions that were being taken long before recent events. There is no doubt that under the Minister's leadership on this issue extraordinary work has been carried out. We need to change the culture. One of my team rang me up to say that "Help her feel safe" needs to be the theme. It needs to include dedicated evenings in the park that are women only. There needs to be the sense that if a man is walking behind a woman, maybe he should cross the road. I come in and out of the argument in my own head about how we should cope with it. How do we create a safe place for everybody to discuss what that is? How do we make sure that women are not by their very nature demonised?

I will finish shortly; I am conscious of the time. I devilled, which was my year's training after being called to the Bar, in 2012. I used to get in very early in the morning to be ahead of all the stuff for the day. One morning there was a conversation between two male counsel. The prosecuting counsel, who was an exceptional barrister, was heavily pregnant. The conversation between the two men was that they hoped the jury would not be swayed by her pregnancy in the determination. I spoke up because I cannot not speak up in that scene and gave a very clear retort, which is probably why I am not practising at the Bar at present but am in the Chamber. I am here because I cannot keep quiet and play by the rules. We cannot do that. I then think, my God, next month or next year those counsel could be prosecutors, defenders or cross-examining women in the dock. We need a massive overhaul. I know from the Tom O'Malley report that a significant amount of work and training has been done. People like Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop, during her time at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and since, have done extraordinary work in retraining and ensuring there is an awareness of and sensitivity towards women.

I commend our work but we have got to figure out a way to fundamentally change how we approach this issue. It needs to start from birth.