Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail)

I want to raise a couple of matters on the Order of Business but directly refer to the matter raised by Senator Keogan. My heart goes out to the family, friends and children of the latest victim of gender-based violence on this island. Sarah Montgomery was murdered. She was pregnant. She was the mother of two children. When are we going to get real as a society? The number of women, and mothers, being killed in their own homes at the hands of people known to them is shocking. We should not be shocked at this stage because it happens so frequently. We need a whole-of-society approach to fixing this problem because it affects women right across the board. We need to talk about this more and to drill down into the reasons this is happening and why there has been an increase. The report published a few weeks ago contained some really shocking statistics. It is the greatest challenge that lies ahead of us as a society. I wish to refer to two other issues if I may, a Chathaoirligh. We all support decreasing costs for our third level students, but let us be real about this - it is the Minister for Finance who holds the purse strings. That is where the power lies. The Minister for Finance during the previous budget, Deputy Chambers, issued the funding to the Department of higher education to decrease the fees paid by families. It is up to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to do that this year. Let us be very clear that is where the power lies on this. I am very glad all our colleagues on the Fine Gael side are on board with that, so let us go away and talk to their Minister for Finance about that.