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.

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