Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Ukrainian ambassador to the House and offer my solidarity to the Ukrainian people.

This Friday is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Earlier this week, the annual report of the Director of Public Prosecutions highlighted an increase of more than one third in domestic violence case files, with high conviction rates in serious crime cases, including murder and rape. The growth in the number of files being referred to her office is unprecedented, with a 23% rise in the total number of files received in the three years up to this reporting period. Such violence against women is one of the most widespread and persistent human rights violations in the world and remains largely unreported due to the stigma and shame surrounding it. This is a crisis that needs more attention. The campaign this week, leading up to Friday, is important. It calls for action to increase awareness of violence against women, as well as aiming to prevent and eliminate such violence. Of course, extreme violence against women can lead to femicide. Since 1996, when Women's Aid began collecting data, 242 women have died in that context. While some of the cases are notorious, others are all but forgotten. We remember all those 242 women this week, from Marilyn Rynn, a civil servant at the Department of the Environment who went missing after she got a Nitelink bus home from her office Christmas party on 22 December 1995, to the women who were killed this year and whose families await justice. We must also be aware of changes across the world in recent years and how they affect women. There is little doubt that there has been a roll-back on women's rights across the globe of late. That has contributed to the demeaning of women, which can contribute to violence. As a society, we need to mobilise and become activists for the prevention of violence against women. We need to stand in solidarity with women's rights activists and support feminist movements across the world to resist the roll-back on women's rights.