2026-07-07

I move: That Dáil Éireann approves the exercise by the State of the option or discretion under Protocol No. 21 on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the area of freedom, security and justice annexed to the Treaty on European Union and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to accept the following measure: Council Decision (EU) 2023/1076 of 1 June 2023 on the conclusion, on behalf of the European Union, of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence with regard to matters related to judicial cooperation in criminal matters, asylum and non-refoulement, a copy of which was laid before Dáil Éireann on 9th June, 2026. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for facilitating this motion. This evening I am seeking the approval of the House to conclude an opt-in under Article 4 of Protocol 21 to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in relation to EU Council Decision 2023/1076. The decision concerns the EU’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which is the Council of Europe's treaty on combating domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. The decision was adopted by the EU institutions as a step in the process of the EU becoming a party to the convention in its own right. Detailed legal consideration was given to the implications of this initiative at the time, including a comprehensive analysis by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which informed the appropriate technical approach to be taken by the EU. Some of the treaty provisions relate to the justice sphere and, therefore, Title V of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In light of Ireland’s position under Protocol 21, the court determined that two decisions were necessary, one to cover areas coming within scope of Protocol 21 where an opt-in is required and another to cover all other matters. Ireland did not opt into this decision when it was initially proposed in order to allow time for a careful examination with the benefit of advice from the Office of the Attorney General. However, we have consistently signalled our intention to proceed with this opt-in, subject to legal advice. In the intervening time, advice has been sought and considered, which has confirmed that there is no impediment to concluding the opt-in at this point. The obligations arising from the EU's ratification of the convention fall primarily on the EU institutions. For example, the Council of Europe’s expert body, GREVIO, is currently carrying out a baseline evaluation of how the EU’s public administration has implemented the convention. However, these activities also require consideration and oversight by member states from time to time. In practical terms, Ireland's ability to contribute is complicated by the fact that we are currently bound by one relevant decision but not the other. While these issues may be seen as somewhat technical in nature, this Council decision should be understood in its broader context. The Istanbul Convention is the gold standard international measure on combating domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. lreland ratified the convention on International Women's Day, 8 March 2019. Zero Tolerance: Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence 2022-2026 is structured around the four pillars of the convention, namely, prevention, protection, prosecution and policy co-ordination. The Istanbul Convention is therefore a very important underpinning to the Government's zero-tolerance approach to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, ensuring all victims and survivors can access the support, protection and justice they need. Domestically, we are taking unprecedented whole-of-government action to tackle the scourge of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. This action is supported by record funding of almost €80 million under budget 2026, ensuring sustained support for front-line services. The Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, is also introducing comprehensive reforming legislation in this area, including the introduction of the domestic violence register, Jennie's Law. Taken together, these national measures demonstrate real, tangible progress at national level across funding, legislation, prevention and victim support. Internationally, Ireland will use its Presidency of the Council of the European Union to maintain a spotlight on the scourge of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence which is so endemic in societies across Europe. Concluding this opt-in at this point will serve to underscore Ireland's commitment to the Istanbul Convention and determination in facing the challenge, shared by all EU member states, of combating all forms domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and ensuring that victims and survivors are fully supported. I commend the motion to the House.

As the Minister of State said, this motion facilitates the State opting in to Council Decision (EU) 2023/1076, relating to the EU's ratification of the Istanbul Convention in areas related to judicial co-operation, asylum, and non-refoulement. Sinn Féin will not be opposing this motion. Primarily, as recognised by Ireland having the opt-out under Protocol 21, matters related to justice should be dealt with through domestic law, with the exception being areas where cross-border and international co-operation is required. I am very conscious that as we discuss the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, in the news today there are two cases of women who have been killed in violent circumstances, including in one case where a husband has been charged with the murder of his wife. These deaths are shocking and a reminder of how much more needs to be done to tackle domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. While we need to ensure there is focus on the prevention of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, we also need to put the supports in place to help those who are seeking to escape such violence to get justice and rebuild their lives. I make the case that there have to be increased efforts to deliver refuge places, including delivering refuges in both counties in my constituency, Cavan and Monaghan. I will raise a number of specific issues with the Minister of State. The first relates to bail and domestic violence. I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, on a number of occasions about the recommendation of the Staines report on bail laws that a breach of a domestic violence court order, as per section 33 of the Domestic Violence Act, should be added to the Schedule of the Bail Act. Issues related to bail and domestic violence have been raised with me, both by members of the legal profession acting on behalf of victims of domestic violence and those who are survivors of domestic abuse. From survivors, there is a sense that the application and enforcement of bail laws are not adequate to ensure their safety. They feel their abusers know they can get away with breaches of bail. The Minister has acted by adding a number of additional offences to the Schedule of the Bail Act, as recommended by the Staines report, but the issue of a breach of a domestic violence order has not been added to date. In his closing remarks, I ask the Minister of State to set out the timeframe under which it is intended to add a breach of domestic violence to the Schedule of the Bail Act. That, of course, also requires the maximum penalty on conviction to be increased to five years' imprisonment, if tried on indictment. A specific issue that has arisen is the misuse of civil protection orders for coercive control. I raise the vexatious misuse of applications for civil protection orders as a form of coercive control or harassment. I am talking about circumstances where an individual repeatedly initiates unfounded court proceedings against the same person. I am aware of one particular case, but I am sure there are others, where such actions continued over a period of years, costing the persons subjected to the vexatious applications tens of thousands of euro as well as considerable time and stress. Cases were taken in multiple District Courts across the State and it was clearly a pattern of harassment of a former partner with whom the person had no ongoing contact. Is this something the Minister of State is aware of? Are legislative measures being considered to provide greater protections for victims in such cases? One of the few options open to people dealing with such circumstances is seeking to obtain what is called an Isaac Wunder order in the High Court, but the costs associated with this make it prohibitive for many. Has the Minister of State looked at the issue of financial barriers faced by victims of vexatious litigation such as I have outlined? Previously, I raised with the Minister what I believe to be the need to review the operation of section 8 of the Criminal Justice (Victims of Crime) Act in relation to information regarding investigations and criminal proceedings. This needs to be expanded to include informing a victim of the death of an offender who is released under supervision. I raised this with the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan. I do not believe it would be overly burdensome if applied to those released under supervision. I hope the Department will examine this. However, there also needs to be a review of its operation to ensure the legislation is right to meet the needs of victims and that victims are constantly informed about its provisions. I recently spoke to someone who had secured a coercive control conviction against the perpetrator and who did not know about their entitlements under this section. When I asked the Minister about this previously, he stated that officials in his Department would highlight issues such as this with An Garda Síochána. I ask the Minister of State for an update on that. I will also raise the issue of civil legal aid. The Minister of State may be aware that the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration published a report last week on the crisis in civil legal aid. We had the review of the civil legal aid scheme carried out by an independent review group, chaired by the former Chief Justice Frank Clarke. That has been on the Minister's desk since last year. There is an urgency in dealing with this and I raise it because of the particular issue as regards victims of domestic violence trying to secure civil legal aid representation. I ask the Minister of State to give us an update on plans to move forward with the recommendations in the independent review group's report or the justice committee's report published last week. Violence against and abuse of women and girls are all too prevalent in society, with often devastating consequences, as we saw in news bulletins today. It is imperative that when this House becomes aware of anomalies or issues in the legal system that we address them head-on and with urgency. It is not good enough for us to simply sign up to conventions or EU frameworks if we are not domestically introducing the measures required to save people who are under constant threat of abuse, often in fear of their lives.

The Social Democrats support the motion. Ireland should absolutely opt in to this Council decision. The Istanbul Convention is one of the most important international agreements we have on preventing violence against women, and domestic violence, and Ireland should fully participate in its EU ratification. While it is important to reaffirm our commitment to the convention, we also have to ask ourselves the much more uncomfortable question of whether we are actually living up to it. The reality facing women in Ireland tells a very different story. Yesterday, Eleanor in my office and I started to prepare the speech I am delivering. Since then, another woman has lost her life and my speech is now outdated. I was going to address the fact that we heard about yet another deeply distressing case in the last few days, with the murder of Adina Costantin in Portlaoise. That murder meant we had reached the same number of women killed by a current or former partner as during the whole of last year. Today, we exceeded that figure. That should horrify every one of us and force us to confront the fact that this crisis is not easing but is, in fact, getting worse. When women make the incredibly brave decision to leave, they are met with a country where 93% of domestic violence refuges are already full, where almost 1,900 women were turned away from refuge accommodation in just six months last year because there was nowhere to go, and which still falls dramatically short of the refuge spaces required under the very convention we are discussing. Every one of these women had probably reached the most frightening moment of her life. She had made the decision to leave and asked the State for help. The answer far too often was and is, "There is no room." Can we all take a minute to stop and imagine how that would feel? Can Deputies imagine being one of these women desperate to get themselves and their children to safety, only to hear days later about record-breaking Exchequer returns and budget surpluses when they have been told there is no room for them to flee from the domestic violence and potential threat to the lives of them and their children? Can they imagine the anger and devastation of living in a country we are told is rich, yet which cannot provide the most basic protection when a life may depend on it? That should shame us all. Women's Aid recorded over 62,000 disclosures of domestic abuse last year, the highest number in its history. It recorded over 11,000 disclosures involving coercive control. We know abuse does not end when relationships end, with almost one in three women seeking support reporting abuse by a former partner. This is happening in every county, city and community in Ireland. While I welcome proposals being examined to allow gardaí to remove perpetrators from their home in high-risk situations, we have to recognise emergency powers alone will never be enough. Women need somewhere safe to go. They need housing, refuge spaces, legal supports that work, a family law system that understands coercive control and, above all, a State that treats this as the emergency it is. The Istanbul Convention is built around prevention, protection, prosecution and co-ordinated policy. The framework is there but the delivery is not. Of course we will support the motion but supporting the convention means more than signing international agreements or participating fully at EU level. It means making sure when a woman finally finds the courage to escape violence, the State is standing there to catch her and help her. Until no woman is turned away from a refuge because there is no bed and no woman has to choose between abuse and homelessness, and until every survivor can access the protection this convention promises, our work is far from done. Ireland has the resources; we need the political will to match. I have had three instances in my constituency this year where a woman made the brave decision to pursue a barring order against a partner from the home they were living in, in Dublin City Council accommodation. When the barring order ends, the perpetrator of the violence that had been inflicted to the point the victim was able to get a barring order is simply able to walk back into the home. I have tabled amendments to housing Bills to address this but it has gone unaddressed to this point. It cannot be the case that, continuously, women who are victims have to leave their homes.

The Council of Europe convention is quite a technical document. I was reading it today. For people listening in, I will explain a little bit about it but then I will talk about why it is so important we have it. It is a leading international treaty on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. The four pillars are prevention, protection of victims, prosecution of perpetrators and co-ordinated government policy. Ireland signed the convention in 2015 and ratified it in 2019. It informs our zero-tolerance strategy - the four pillars are in that. This motion will allow us to opt in to council decisions - one does not require us to opt in; the other does - and that allows us to do things in the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It will allow us to be part of working party meetings and help us develop EU policies on violence against women and participate in EU positions under the convention. I worked in a domestic violence project and this is really important for me. We need to explore every available option to make sure the policies and structures are in place for us in Ireland and throughout Europe and to make sure whatever we need to do on paper - structures, frameworks, all those things - is done because there is an epidemic of domestic and gender-based violence in this country and throughout Europe. When we want to put all those frameworks in place, we need to have the mechanisms to prosecute perpetrators and protect women and to make sure there are enough domestic violence refuge spaces. I am sure previous speakers mentioned that already. Speaking last week on the Order of Business, I said we needed an urgent debate in this Chamber about domestic violence because there are not enough spaces. There are supposed to be 500 refuge spaces in Ireland but there are 172. That is clearly not enough. The moment a woman decides to leave is one of the most dangerous times. She may have nowhere to go and is then stuck living with that person. We all know the outcomes for the women who have been killed in Ireland in recent years. Recently discussed in this Chamber was Women's Aid. Its report from 2025 said there were 62,275 disclosures of abuse, of which 4,755 involved children. We need to make sure any woman who needs a refuge space has it. I will say again that is not good enough that a woman has to leave her home with her children because of domestic violence. It is the perpetrator who should be leaving the home and the woman should be safe in her home. He should have to leave or she should have to leave - whoever the perpetrator is, they need to be ostracised, not the woman and her children.

We support the motion. Gender-based and domestic violence is a problem across Europe and it is welcome that the EU is taking seriously its role in tackling the issue by signing the Istanbul Convention. Ireland is already a state party to the convention but opting in in full to the EU's ratification process will mean we can play a full part in the Europe-wide fight against gender-based violence. That will be particularly important in light of the EU Presidency. It is welcome the Government is taking this step. It is important but we need far greater action from Government on tackling violence against women and girls and domestic violence. When it comes to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, the scale of the challenge we face is clear. The figures are stark. There were 22,700 contacts to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's national helpline in 2024, there were 32,144 contacts to Women's Aid in the same year and gardaí responded to an average of 1,250 incidents per week. While the zero-tolerance strategy commits to doubling the number of refuge spaces in the country by the end of 2026 - and that was a welcome step - the ambition falls far short of what is needed. The Government strategy to double provision to 282 places is based on one unit per 10,000 women, rather than one place per 10,000 population. Article 23 of the Istanbul Convention sets out a clear requirement to provide an adequate ratio of shelter places to the total population. That means Ireland would still need another 250 places to be compliant. All the while, our population continues to grow. What terrifies me is that the number of women killed violently so far this year matches the total figure for 2025. We still have nine counties with no refuge. We know the Government is unlikely to meet the target of doubling refuge spaces by the end of 2026. We had 141 at the start; we are now in June and have 193. We have had 285 women die violently in this country since 1996. So far this year, a number of women have died violently. Adina Constantin, Yveta Donovalova, Kelly Marie Lynch, Amy Doherty and Ellie Flanagan have all died violently in this country. Some 50% of all victims are under the age of 35, while 63% were killed at home, 87% by a man who was known to them. When I talk about domestic and gender-based violence, I always think of the former State pathologist, Dr. Marie Cassidy. She said very pertinently that it is not the man under the bed you need to worry about, but the man sleeping beside you in the bed, whether it be your husband or partner. Last week, shockingly, 1,900 women were turned away from refuge places. That is why I called for the Minister for justice to come into the Chamber last week and take questions on this. In many counties we are failing women. In my own County Limerick, we do not have a sexual assault treatment unit. If a woman is raped in Limerick or the mid-west, including Clare, Tipperary and down as far as west Clare, unless the woman is willing to report the incident to the Garda, which can be more traumatising for that individual, she has to travel, often on public transport, in the clothes she was wearing and with the DNA and the semen of her attacker, to Galway in order to get a fulsome examination and an STI check. While it is welcome that we are debating this motion tonight, we need to go much further. We need 500 refuge spaces and we need to make sure the Government meets the target by the end of 2026, as was set out by Cuan. I am also concerned that for victims and survivors of domestic violence who are leaving their home or moving county, the protocols brought forward by the Minister for housing last week do not currently cover those who are in receipt of HAP and RAS. That is something the Government needs to look at and rectify. On many metrics, things are getting worse. We have an epidemic of male violence against women in this country. We have an epidemic of misogyny. Victims need to feel they have the confidence in the system to come forward such that they know their case will be prosecuted and investigated properly and they will get the justice they deserve. The number of failed prosecutions for rape in this country leaves an awful lot to be desired. I want to see a step change and a culture shift whereby we create a system in which women have confidence that they will be listened to and believed and that their perpetrator will be brought to justice.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for facilitating the motion this evening, and the Deputies for their input. I wish to take the opportunity to express my appreciation at the unwavering commitment shown by this House to the fight against domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. I take on board all the comments made by Deputies throughout the debate. The Government is taking unprecedented action across Departments and agencies and with the support of civil society to tackle the scourge of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. Our national approach is underpinned by the four pillars of the Istanbul Convention, namely prevention, protection, prosecution and policy co-ordination. Concluding this opt-in will allow Ireland to participate fully in the EU's activities related to its status as party to the convention within its own right. This step will serve at international level to reaffirm Ireland's commitment to the convention and the fight against all forms of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, particularly in the context of Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union. I am grateful for the support shown by this House for the motion.