Paul Murphy

Overall sentiment: -0.34
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I pay tribute to the family of Jennie Poole, and particularly her brother Jason, who is in the Gallery and who fought very hard for many years to get this important legislation implemented in her memory. It is a tragedy that the law has come too late for Jennie, but it has the potential to protect other women at risk from dangerous intimate partners. At the moment and until this law is passed, there is no way for people to find out whether their partners have a history of violence against women, even if they have previously been convicted of a serious offence, such as rape or coercive control, and even if they have served a prison sentence for it. The Bill was, in part, inspired by the domestic violence disclosure scheme in England and Wales. However, there is no provision in it for An Garda Síochána to proactively disclose a violent offender's history to a new partner. The Minister has previously said that, under Operation Devise, An Garda Síochána will provide support to new partners of people with serious domestic violence convictions, closely monitor any evidence of new violence and have a proactive arrest policy, but that is not the same as knocking on a door and warning a woman that her partner has a violent past. Instead, the law puts all the onus on women and other members of the public, such as their friends and family, to look up the domestic violence judgments register. It has been possible in other jurisdictions to enable proactive disclosure, so I am not sure why it cannot be done here. Unfortunately, this law, while welcome, is only one part of the battle in a war against male violence against women. Gender-based violence is endemic. It is an epidemic. The courts are full of women seeking barring and harassment orders. Thousands of children are growing up in violent homes. As of last week, eight women had been killed in Ireland so far this year. They are Scarlett Faulkner, Linda Costello, Milena Ostojic, Yveta Donovalova, Masuma Sohrabi, Noreen Daly, Adina Constantin and Jamey Carney. Yesterday in Ballymeena, another woman and girl whose names we do not know yet were murdered. Laws like this one are welcome, but they cannot tear out the problem by its roots, which are in sexism, misogyny and the way capitalism breeds and profits from that sexism and misogyny. We all know it is on the rise. It is happening among young men, who in the past would always have had more progressive attitudes than those who went before them. One of the primary drivers of this is the online manosphere. It propagates toxic masculinity and hatred of women for profit. Millions of people around the world are being exposed to this toxic content every time they log in to social media and the big tech companies are making millions out of it. It is normalising misogyny on a global scale. It is a kind of mass brainwashing that is driving attitudes towards women back into the dark ages. It is not good enough just to deal with the after-effects. Prevention is always better than cure, so the Government should be tackling gender-based violence at source by combating misogyny, including by turning off toxic algorithms that are driving toxic content and toxic real-world behaviour.

Sentiment score: -0.34