Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said that people should be "screaming from the rooftops" about the number of women being killed in Ireland.
The Fine Gael Minister was speaking exclusively to the Irish Mirror as part of our 'Stop the Violence' campaign.
In a wide-ranging interview, Ms McEntee spoke about the legislative and cultural changes that are required to tackle what Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described this week as an "epidemic" of violence against women.
As reported by The Irish Mirror on Monday, the number of women who were murdered in 2022 doubled compared to 2021.
Asked about how she felt about seeing these figures as a woman, Ms McEntee admitted that they were frightening.
"It hits you every single time," she said. "I certainly felt last year and even this year it was happening too often.
"I think particularly for women when you read that, you're just thinking why or how. We’re talking about domestic violence more. We're doing more, we’re committed to doing more, particularly after Covid.
"The fact that there were more women murdered last year, it just really doesn't sit well. You think it should be turning. People should be thinking twice about it, we should be seeing figures going in the opposite direction.
"It makes me more determined to actually turn those figures around and have less women in that situation. It’s upsetting. It's upsetting for every woman to see that.
"The Garda figures last year showed that more women were killed in domestic incidents than there were more general homicides. We should be screaming from the rooftops when that happens. We have a plan in place. We're working towards it.
"But everybody should be sitting up and saying, 'Why is this happening? How can I do more? How can I prevent this from happening?'"
The Government published its Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence. At the launch, Minister McEntee, alongside then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Equality Roderic O’Gorman in June 2022, stated that public buy-in was required.
She said: "I cannot insert myself into the WhatsApp Group and call out the type of behaviours. I cannot insert myself on every single night out where these types of incidents are happening."
Speaking a year on, she admitted that while she believes public support is building, there is a way to go.
She said: "The fact [is] that more women were murdered in their homes than there were homicides. The fact that one in every five women have said they've been raped.
"If that was any other crime or statistic, I would wonder would people be marching on the streets and screaming and roaring the place down?
"It's not happening. I do think people are listening. I do think they’ve sat up. I do think more people are on board with trying to bring about change.
"I think we need to just keep talking about it. It's like a lot of issues, it comes into the domain and then it often leaves it."
Figures published by Women’s Aid earlier this week showed the number of people contacting the service increased by 16 per cent in 2022, with over 31,000 contacts. Ms McEntee said that while the figures are stark, they are also positive as it shows that women are coming forward to seek help.
However, she also believes that the figure is just the "tip of the iceberg" and we do not know the full extent of domestic violence in Ireland.
"When you look at the figures that were published last week, the CSO figures as well, the sexual violence surveys, one in five women have been raped or sexually assaulted," she said.
"You apply that to any group of people you know, any group of girls that you're a part of or any room you walk into. We're only getting the tip of the iceberg here."
The lack of Irish refuge spaces in Ireland has long been criticised. The Istanbul Convention calls for Ireland to have 476 refuge spaces.
The Domestic Violence Strategy, however, commits to doubling Ireland’s space from 140 to 280 over the plan’s five-year lifespan. Ms McEntee said that these targets will be expanded and the total number of required spaces will be put in place in later plans.
During her first three years at the helm of the Department of Justice, the Minister has brought in a number of new laws to tackle gender-based violence. This includes CoCo’s law, which criminalised the distribution of intimate images without consent.
Legislation to crack down on stalking and non-fatal manual strangulation will be enacted in the coming weeks and the maximum sentences for assault causing harm will be increased.
However, she accepts that more needs to be done. She explained that plans are to be put in place to have specialised domestic and sexual violence judges and courts. This will be done, she explained, so that there is an "understanding of what victims go through, how you can re-traumatise victims through the process".
She continued: "But also what is appropriate in terms of the crime and the sentence matching each other. Often what we see and what people feel is that the sentence simply doesn't match the crime that's happened."
Ms McEntee said that a Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency will be set up early next year and that the Government will continue to look at consent and making sure that it’s “clearly understood in the courts”.
However, she stressed again that societal change will play a pivotal role in tackling gender-based violence.
"The only way we do that is by campaigns like the one that you're running, me continuing to prioritise it as Minister, organisations continuing to talk about it and media showing that this is still a problem."
