Danny Healy-Rae urges stronger enforcement of protection orders

I'm glad to get the chance here to talk about this very important motion here this evening and want to thank Sinn Féin for bringing it forward. I welcome the ladies in the gallery who are here campaigning for justice and depending on us, like all the other women out there who have been abused for Dorian to, you know, see after them and uphold their rights and their right to live and to carry on where they always have been and in their own local areas. And I see one of the lines that there is an urgent need for robust enforcement of protection orders and I suppose that's where we should develop some strategy to ensure that I have Deputy Barrett saying there that the Council should play their part in moving the woman from her house. I say it is the man that she's afraid of should be moved from that area, not the woman having to move. She did nothing wrong and these enforcement of protection orders, they're not symbolic but they should be enforced and we should ensure, Minister, that whatever way it's done that the women will have freedom to live where they have been or where they want to live. If they want to move, that's fine, but they shouldn't have to move so that they wouldn't see or be intimidated by an abuser. They should get, they should be seen after. We have heard all the stories and we know all the dreadful and horrible things that happened to women in our country over a number of years. So many of them murdered, so many of them maimed and badly injured and hurt and that's of severe difficulty for all of us to believe that such a thing should or could happen in our country and we must seek to close the gap and put a stop to this for once and for all. And I know, Minister, you're bringing forward your own bill and any way that we can strengthen it or use any of what's in this motion, we should do that as well, to ensure that we have the best possible outcome for women and girls, women of all ages and to ensure that they are properly catered for and seen after. And I said for these constant abusers that have and they get the facility of legal aid, that should only happen once or twice the very most that these abusers are horrible people, get this repeated facility of legal aid, it should be cut down to at least two rounds of it and after that lock them up and they shouldn't have, they shouldn't get fair pay after that. We must ensure the appropriate safeguarding of all victims and all those that are vulnerable. And especially we know of young disabled children, non-verbal and disabled, we must seek to protect them at all costs. They depend entirely on the system, our laws to protect them. If enforcement is weak and they're left exposed to harm, that is a failure of all justice. Minister, I think Matthew McGrath was to speak, but look, I'll just say that this is a very important matter for all of us to deal with. Women are weaker physically than men and it can be that men should be left abused or hurt them or kill them like has been happening. We must make it ever so more harder for them. And we know that in very minority times that men get abused. We can't allow that either. That has happened from time to time, but in a way less amount of times than it's always. More often, 99% of the time it's the other ways. Look, we're depending on the Ministers to... And as far as, take expedite the bill and bring it forward and ensure that in the next 12 months that it's settled out for once and for all to go on for long enough. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.