I welcome the Bill. It has been a long time coming. Two things were very striking when women in particular were murdered in the past. One was the fact that the partner who may have killed them could inherit the family home and other wealth, and the other was that they could be the immediate first guardian. This Bill deals with the latter. I commend the relatives and in particular David, the brother of Valerie French Kilroy who was murdered by her husband. David has battled to get this Bill passed. It is that type of activism that leads to legal changes because for many years this has been demanded and called for. The idea that the birth father has a divine right to the custody of their children and access to their children has to be challenged. We heard a while ago from Deputy who talked about Tusla. She talked about rape and child sexual abuse without any care for the impact it has on people who are listening as well. She also spoke about the child sexual abuse of people in State care. Let us be clear: most child sexual abuse takes place within families. Let us nail this one on of the head because it is a constant mantra from a few parties and Deputies in this House. It is just a common refrain. For all the faults and issues relating to Tusla - and there are many - the idea that it should not be able to remove a child or take a child away from the natural father is something that we should challenge. We have all read about and seen sisters and so on coming out onto the court steps and talking about how abuse continued for many years. It is very relevant because it is the mindset that led to this law talking so long to come about. We need Tusla to be properly resourced. We need all of the child State agencies to have the ability and staffing, which is a huge problem because of burnout as well, to be able to intervene to protect children, no matter where it is coming from. We see the same phenomenon in the family courts. This is something that more women are coming out and talking about. Children are being forced to stay with abusive fathers in cases of separation because the patriarchal family has such a huge power and status in our society and in our legal systems. The claims regarding parental alienation are all related to the philosophy that has led to this law taking so long. As has been mentioned, femicide is a huge problem. It is a global epidemic related to gender-based violence. The UN says that every ten minutes a girl or woman is killed by a relative somewhere in the world. That is a shocking and stark statistic. It is more commonplace in some societies and cultures than in others but we are far from immune. Northern Ireland is the most dangerous place for women and historically the Republic of Ireland has been a very patriarchal and sexist culture as well. I welcome this Bill. I give huge credibility to David French and others who have campaigned for it. It has been a long time coming but we need much more legal change in the area of gender-based violence. While I welcome this Bill and also welcome the fact that other Bills such as Jennie's Law are being looked at, we also need huge change in the area of the misogyny in the court system. It is something that has come up, and I know that the Minister is dealing with the counselling notes issue, and we had a debate only the other day on this. Survivors and therapists were hugely upset and disappointed after that committee meeting. In fact, rather than seeing progress, they feel that it is going backwards, and I feel that too. Deputies Simon Harris, Micheál Martin, Helen McEntee and others talked about the need to remove counselling notes from the courts system, but the Minister seemed to defend the practice the other day. That was hugely disappointing for so many people, and I just have to relay that. It is good that this is happening but we need a lot more innovation in our courts system as well because if we keep gender-based violence silent and secret, people will not report and will not come forward if these really traumatising practices are maintained in our system. I welcome the Bill.

Sentiment score: -0.12