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 Since then, another woman has lost her life and my speech is now outdated.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.

Sentiment score: -0.20