Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I thank him and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, for their work on this issue. Thanks are also due to people like former Minister Frances Fitzgerald who contributed so much to the women's agenda.

I have two wee girls aged eight and ten whom I have reared to be proud of their bodies and their gender. They are now at an age at which I am beginning to introduce them to the realities of the world, which makes me really sad and really angry. I must now teach them that they cannot always assume they are safe and that they have to learn behaviours to make sure they are safe. I do not want that. They are hearing things on the radio and picking up information elsewhere, particularly in the past year. In our community, for example, the killing of Maud Coffey has happened since the new year. My daughters are aware of femicide, that more men kill women than women kill men and that it is often done by people who are close to them.

This is as it always has been. There has always been a culture of entitlement and an abuse of relationships and power. However, there is an added complexity now that was not there when I was younger whereby there is new aggression in the vocal nature of the socially acceptable ways of speaking about women. It is violent and abusive and it is overt on social media. That is what we are fighting against. We talk about zero tolerance but there are people considered role models who use language that is completely unacceptable. That is why this issue has become so difficult and challenging. I welcome the third strategy on violence against women and the zero-tolerance approach, but the fact is the problem is endemic and the complexity of the challenge is huge.

An example of what we are up against can be seen in the case of a man in Ashtown who was given a four-year suspended sentence for abusing his female partner. The newspaper articles about the case describe how he committed a string of violent assaults on a weekly basis that included punching the victim, slamming her head against a wall, smothering her with a pillow, throwing her down the stairs and spitting in her face. He was controlling in every aspect of her life, cutting her off from her family and threatening to have her and her relatives abducted and killed, to the point where she wanted to commit suicide. The Minister is addressing that through the doubling of the maximum sentencing for assault causing harm. However, when people see these kinds of sentences, it does not given them confidence. That is what we are up against. We have spoken about victims' journeys and putting victims at the centre of the criminal justice system. However, the victim in this case will be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.

I have had an increased number of requests for improved lighting in parks, green areas and other public places. People coming home from The Carpenter pub in Dublin 15, for instance, have to go through unlighted areas on their way to the estates in which they live. I cannot get those lights installed in public places, which would make people feel safer. We have a job to do in our communities.

It is positive news that the number of refuges will be doubled. However, I hear from people about the numbers who are turned away in areas like Blanchardstown. I ask that we capture the data not only on the increase in refuge places but also on the number of people who cannot be accommodated.

The Minister is doing important work around the criminal justice system. Work also needs to be done in practical ways to make women feel safer in their communities. This covers everything from transport to public lighting in parks to increasing the number of community gardaí. Those gardaí do a fantastic job but we need more of them. It is also about education and the importance of reforming the social, personal and health education, SPHE, curriculum. That must include addressing pornography, which has been a huge disrupter in this entire area. It absolutely needs to be tackled.