Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with Senator McDowell. Senator Norris is a Joycean scholar who has brought so much colour to the Seanad. To have been in the Chamber to at least hear him speak has been a real honour for me as well. Everything that Senator Norris achieved and what he did by bringing his case to the European Court of Human Rights was crucial in changing legislation here in Ireland, and we can never forget the importance of that court.

What I want to speak about today is the report that has come from GREVIO, the group of experts looking at the Istanbul Convention around domestic violence in particular. I am raising this because I know that, locally, our Lions Club is holding an information session around domestic and gender-based violence. We should be able to hold these information sessions in small towns as well as big towns, and we should be able to engage around the four principles of the Istanbul Convention, one of which is prevention, which is around education policy and how we are delivering that in our primary and secondary schools.

There is a very good University of Galway programme, active consent, which rolls out workshops to secondary schools. I want to highlight that as one of the measures we are looking at in terms of protection and trying to ensure we are changing the behaviours that lead to bullying, cyberbullying or this type of behaviour that puts women and, at times, men in fear of aggression, abuse and violence, whether in the home or outside.