Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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824. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the future domestic steps which need to be taken in order for Ireland to ratify the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence; when Ireland will ratify same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28068/17]

Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael)
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This Government is totally committed to tackling domestic violence, as am I as Minister for Justice and Equality.

The Programme for Government commits to full implementation of the Istanbul Convention. This Convention is a significant legal instrument in tackling violence against women and domestic violence. Many of the actions required by provisions in the Istanbul Convention are being implemented on a daily basis under current legislation and administrative practice. The 18 actions necessary to ratify the Istanbul Convention are contained in the Second National Strategyon Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence 2016-2021, published in January, 2016.

A number of actions are completed. Of the outstanding actions six are administrative including public sector training/education by a range of State agencies, the development of a Risk Assessment Matrix by An Garda Síochána, commissioning of a national helpline service to respond to issues of domestic and sexual violence, and support for child witnesses. Work on implementing these actions is progressing on schedule to be implemented by the end of 2017.

The remaining actions are legislative and require delivery of three pieces of legislation:

i) The Domestic Violence Bill which was published on 3 February 2017 and is at Committee Stage in the Seanad. The Bill is a key action towards ratifying the Istanbul Convention and its enactment will deliver four Istanbul actions.

ii) The Victims Bill (which delivers one action) passed Committee Stage in May of this year.

iii) The one remaining legislative action is the enactment of legislation for extraterritorial jurisdiction. Work on this action is underway in order to meet the timescale for this action which is quarter 4 2017.

When the required actions are implemented, Ireland will be in a position to ratify the Convention. The intended timeframe for this is Q1 2018.