Ireland will have ‘potentially more’ than 400 refuge beds, says McEntee

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has said she wants to see "potentially more" than 400 refuge beds for victims of domestic and gender-based violence across Ireland.

The increase is part of the Government’s new strategy for combatting violence against women.

Ms McEntee said the State needed “multiples” of the 140 refuge beds currently available to victims of abuse. The minister also said her department’s new strategy would seek to support victims as they go through the criminal justice system and include 52 clear actions including regional protection units and legal support for victims.

"We're trying to fill the gaps where my department has responsibility," Ms McEntee told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland on Tuesday.

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The minister was speaking following Monday night’s RTÉ Investigates programme which was based on 12 months of interviews carried out in women’s refugees across Ireland. The documentary underlined the fourfold increase in emergency calls to services from domestic abuse survivors over the past 12 months. Meanwhile, one in four women in Ireland have been abused by a current or former partner while one in nine men have experienced such abuse.

Ms McEntee said she felt “angry and frustrated” watching the documentary but then started questioning “what are we doing in Government, how can we do it better and quicker, how can we protect these women”.

“We need to change the structure. At the moment, if you do not have a community organisation or service provider who comes forward, then the service is not delivered. That can’t continue and we need to change that.”

Strategy

The minister said her department’s new strategy, which will set a “zero tolerance” approach to violence against women, will open for public consultation for three weeks from February 17th and will be published “within a matter of months”.

She also said refuges would be opened in the nine Irish counties that currently do not have safe residential spaces for victims of domestic and sexual violence and said shortage of capacity in other counties would be increased.

“Better communication” is needed to ensure women did not lose their Housing Assistance Payment when they flee their abusers, she said. “If you have to flee your home, HAP should be provided for you,” she said. “That is Government policy.”

Ms McEntee said €9million had been allocated to modernise the courts structure, part of which would entail training judges and legal professionals about how repeatedly adjourning cases was “retraumatising” victims. Guidelines for sentencing will also be examined, said Ms McEntee.

Director of the National Women’s Council Orla O’Connor told The Irish Times she was not surprised by experiences relayed in the RTÉ documentary as “violence against women is an epidemic in Ireland”.

The lack of refuge spaces “absolutely must change” and “we need to make it easier for women to report domestic and sexual violence”, said Ms O’Connor. Better data collection is also needed to provide a clear picture of the scale of this problem, she said.

‘Contact’

“We know from the numbers of women who contact the frontline services that both domestic and sexual violence is happening to a much greater degree than what is in any official records. If we are serious about tackling violence against women, then we need reliable and accurate data on gender-based violence to fully understand its nature, prevalence and extent.”

The Safe Ireland charity, which works to end domestic violence in this country, said on Monday night that the RTÉ documentary had clearly conveyed the “insidious nature of coercive control; the horror of physical assault; the strain on under-resourced frontline responders; and the abject impotency of the judicial system to hold perpetrators to account”.

“It is time to develop a radical and ambitious strategy that plans for the elimination of violence against women over the next three decades – not just the next three years.”