Written answers

Monday, 8 September 2025

Department of Justice and Equality

Court Judgments

Photo of Máire DevineMáire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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1620. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality for the total number of prosecutions initiated relating to domestic, sexual, and gender based violence in 2022, 2023, and 2024, including but not limited to coercive control, breach of interim barring order, breach of protection order, breach of barring order, breach of safety order, breach of emergency barring order, and any incident type with an original CAD incident type of ‘DVSA’; by year, in tabular form. [45756/25]

Photo of Máire DevineMáire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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1621. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality for the total number of convictions relating to domestic, sexual, and gender based violence in 2022, 2023, and 2024, including but not limited to coercive control, breach of interim barring order, breach of protection order, breach of barring order, breach of safety order, breach of emergency barring order, and any incident type with an original CAD incident type of ‘DVSA’; by year, in tabular form. [45757/25]

Photo of Máire DevineMáire Devine (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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1622. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality [45758/25]

Photo of Jim O'CallaghanJim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1620, 1621 and 1622 together.

This Government is committed to combatting all forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence as a central priority.

'Zero Tolerance,' the Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence (DSGBV), set out an ambitious programme of reform to achieve a society which does not accept DSGBV or the attitudes which underpin it.

A key objective of the Strategy is to encourage victims of domestic and sexual violence to come forward and report the heinous crimes being committed against them.

Measures to achieve this have included the 'Always Here' Campaign, a public awareness campaign developed by my department in collaboration with frontline DSGBV services and the 'Hardest Stories' Campaign which has been developed by Cuan in collaboration with my Department, that ran in February 2025. Further campaigns are scheduled to run before the end of this year.

These campaigns, coupled with the establishment of Cuan the DSGBV Agency in 2024, and the DPSU provision by An Garda Síochána are key to addressing the historical and significant under-reporting of such crimes, by supporting victims to come forward and providing services to these victims.

My Department is continuing to work with agencies in the criminal justice system to strengthen trust and confidence in the system, so that victims will feel more assured in coming forward to report what has happened to them and have access to supports related to the nature of the harm they have experienced.

With respect to the Deputy's queries around the numbers of prosecutions, convictions and custodial sentences as they relate to domestic, sexual, and gender based violence between 2022 and 2024, the Courts Service has provided the following tables:

Table 1 - outlines prosecutions

Table 2 - outlines convictions

Table 3 - outlines custodial sentences

Please note that these data have been provided with a number of qualifications.

  1. The Courts Service can only provide the number of offences that have been finalised before the District Court and District Court Appeals for the years 2022 to 2024 under section 33(1) and section 39(1) and (3) of the Domestic Violence Act 2018 by Court Office.
  2. There is no separate code for breach of interim barring order, breach of protection order, breach of barring order, breach of safety order, breach of emergency barring order as they are all prosecuted under the same code.
  3. The data only include offences where offence codes were provided by prosecutors and may not include all relevant offences.
  4. Some of those offences have been sent forward for trial to the Circuit Court At this time, the system in use by the Courts Service in the Circuit Courts cannot produce reports for specific offences.
  5. CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) incident types are not provided to the Courts Service by prosecutors, therefore the report has been produced using the offence codes which the Courts Service understands meet the information requested.

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