Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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173. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if he has established a dedicated group in his Department that focuses on sexual violence and the prevention of same; if his Department collates and monitors the records instances of sexual and gender-based violence; and if he will provide a breakdown of instances by gender for the past two years to date. [23628/23]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Lead responsibility for policy in relation to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence lies with  the Criminal Justice Policy function in my Department. The Policy function leads on the development of national policy on specific themes and drafts, consults on and manages the negotiation and approval of EU/International and applied policies.

The Community Safety Policy team has responsibility, inter alia, for the development of policy that responds to the new and emerging challenges facing the domestic, sexual and gender based violence sector.  It is this team that was responsible for coordinating the development of Zero Tolerance, the Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based Violence and they are the main point of contact point for NGOs, including in relation to the monitoring and implementation of the Strategy.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Strategy was co-designed with the DSGBV sector and it fully recognises the need for a whole of government, whole of society, approach to tackling all forms of domestic, sexual and gender based violence.

 The Community Safety Policy team gather insight from relevant stakeholders and NGOs, undertake research, look at international best practice and examine emerging trends. They also engage on relevant issues at EU/ International level, including in relation to legislative negotiations, as well as providing updates on potential impacts on the domestic, sexual and gender based violence sector.

My Department is very aware of the need for robust data in relation to the prevalence of sexual violence and that is why, in 2017, we requested the CSO to develop and undertake a nationally representative survey to provide high quality national prevalence data on sexual violence in Ireland.

The results of that survey have now been published and are available on the CSO website at www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-svsmr/sexualviolencesurvey2022mainresults/

The survey covers a range of behaviours from non-contact sexual violence right through to non-consensual sexual intercourse, or rape and provides information broken down by the gender of the victims /survivor, among other things.

We now know, based on the survey, the full extent of this problem and we have a baseline to measure the impact of our work across Government, as well as to help us to develop policy and provide the necessary supports and services. It also underlines the importance of having our whole of government zero tolerance approach to DSGBV.

 The CSO will be repeating this survey every 10 years and, in the interim, the importance of having robust data is stressed throughout the Third National DSGBV Strategy and is evident in a number of specific actions. It is also included as a specific function for the new statutory based DSGBV Agency, who will be tasked with developing a data and evaluation strategy to ensure there are shared definitions and agreed methodologies for collecting, analysing, and sharing data on access to and use of services.

In addition to focusing on the need for robust data to drive our work in this area, the actions within the Strategy reflect the importance of advancing work in a range of areas, including education, training, awareness raising, supports, robust legislation and importantly, having a victim centred approach to all of our work in this priority area. We are committed to delivering on the goal of this strategy - a society that does not accept any form of domestic, sexual or gender based violence.