Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Combatting all forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is a priority for this Government and one that is reflected in a range of policies and legislation, as well as unprecedented increases in Budget allocations.

In June of last year, we published a 5 year ambitious Zero Tolerance Strategy. This is a €363 million strategy, and is built on the four pillars of Prevention, Protection, Prosecution and Policy Co-Ordination. The accompanying implementation plan contains 144 detailed actions to be implemented this year.

As the deputy will be aware, this entails a significant body of work.

Key elements include:

• The doubling of the overall number of refuge units over the lifetime of the Strategy.
• The establishment of a new statutory DSGBV Agency in January 2024, which will bring together the expertise and focus required to tackle this complex social issue.
• Many of the actions in the Strategy are focused on enhanced supports for victims, including the provision of legal aid and legal advice, and trauma-informed training.

A fundamental aim of the Strategy is to change societal attitudes to domestic and sexual violence. By building on the successes of previous awareness-raising campaigns, new initiatives on intimate image abuse were developed earlier this year, with awareness campaigns on healthy consent and on DSGBV support services planned before the end of the year.

It is for all of us to realise that we must do - in our everyday lives - to eradicate social and cultural attitudes which contribute to an environment where women and men feel safe and protected.

The government has introduced and is committed to enacting a range of legislation to combat DSGBV.

The Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill passed through the Houses of the Oireachtas on the 12th of July 2023 and was signed into law by the President on the 19th of July. The Act introduces a new standalone offence for stalking and a new standalone offence of non-fatal strangulation. This delivers on key commitments contained in the Zero Tolerance Strategy.

This builds on several important pieces of legislation which have been enacted in recent years, including:

• The enacting of Coco’s Law to criminalise sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent.
• The enacting of a law to remove reporting restrictions which prevented parents from speaking publicly about their deceased child in cases where the child was unlawfully killed.
• The enacting of measures to introduce pre-trial hearing to ensure that victims are less likely to face stressful unexpected delays and adjournments to trial start dates.
• The enacting of the Sex Offenders (Amendment) Act 2023 on 5th April 2023.
• The enacting of the Family Courts Bill 2022 to establish new dedicated Family Courts within the existing court structures and to put families at the centre of the family justice system

With regard to financial allocations for DSGBV measures under my Department, funding has been provided under four subheads for 2023.

These are:

• Domestic, Sexual and Gender Based Violence - Awareness Raising and Training - €6.098m.
• Funding for organisations that provide services for victims of crime including victims of sexual crimes and domestic abuse - approximately €4.14m of this allocation relates to DSGBV.
• Dormant Accounts Funding - approximately €1.39m of the allocation relates to DSGBV.

Key to the implementation of the Strategy is the establishment of the new DSGBV Agency which will be responsible for setting standards for services and refuges, and monitoring adherence. It will bring responsibility for funding DSGBV services under the remit of my Department. I am pleased to say that considerable progress has been made to date towards establishing the new Agency, which will be up and running in January 2024.

Pending establishment of the Agency, responsibility for funding domestic violence services continues to be managed by Tusla and this will remain the case until services formally transfer to the new Agency.

I'm informed by Tusla that the additional funding of €6.9m which I secured to address acute service demands and for investment in new services in 2023, brought Tusla's total funding for DSGBV services this year to €35.37m.

The Deputy should note that capital funding for refuges is accessed through the Capital Assistance Scheme administered by the Department of Housing.