Paul Murphy: Proactive warnings needed to protect women

Thanks Cathaoirleach. I want to start by paying tribute to the family of Jenny Poole and particularly her brother Jason who's in the gallery, who have fought so hard for years to get this important legislation implemented in her memory. It's a tragedy that the law has come too late for Jenny, but it does have the potential to protect other women at risk from dangerous intimate partners. Because at the moment, until this law is passed, there's no way of finding out if your partner has a history of violence against women, even if they've previously been convicted of a very serious offence like rape or coercive control, even if they've served a prison sentence for it. This bill is in part inspired by the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme in England and Wales, however there's no provision in it for the Gardaí to proactively disclose a violent offender's history to a new partner. The Minister has previously said that under Operation Devise, the Guards will provide support for new partners with serious domestic violence convictions, closely monitor any evidence of new violence, and have a proactive arrest policy. But that obviously isn't the same thing as knocking on someone's door and warning a woman that your partner has a violent past. Instead, the law puts all the onus onto women and other members of the public, such as their friends and family, to look up the Domestic Violence Judgements Register. It has been possible in other jurisdictions to enable proactive disclosure, so I'm not sure why this can't be done here. Unfortunately, while this law while welcome, it 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 in Ireland have been killed so far this year. Scarlett Faulkner, Linda Costolo, Milena Ostojic, Iveta Donovalova, Massouma Sohrabi, Noreen Daly, Adina Constantine and Jamie Carney. And now today in Ballymena, another woman and girl, whose names we don't know yet, have been murdered. Laws like this one are welcome, but they can't 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 that they're on the rise. We know it's 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 single time they log into social media, and the big tech companies are making millions out of it. It is normalising misogyny on a global scale. It's a kind of mass brainwashing that is driving attitudes towards women back into the dark ages. It's not just good enough to deal with the after-effects. Prevention is always better than cure. And so the government should be tackling gender-based violence at source by combating misogyny, including by turning off the toxic algorithms that are driving toxic content and driving toxic real-world behaviour. For more UN videos visit www.un.org