Frances Fitzgerald will seek cabinet approval this morning for a bill which would bring Ireland in line with EU domestic abuse legislation.
The tanaiste had said that Ireland would not ratify the Istanbul Convention until 2018, despite the government previously claiming protections for victims would be in place by next year.
The Domestic Violence Bill 2016 will combine domestic abuse legislation into one bill, while also aiming to make the court process less intimidating and creating new protections for those being harassed electronically.
Ms Fitzgerald, the tanaiste and justice minister, had said that the legislation would be a key step towards Ireland implementing the Istanbul Convention, a European-wide agreement against domestic abuse which came into effect in 2014.
She is also understood to be taking the Victims of Crime Bill to cabinet this morning. It relates to a 2012 EU directive on victims’ rights which was supposed to be signed into Irish law a year ago. The European Commission began infringement proceedings against Ireland in February over its failure to implement the directive.
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She said that passing both bills would mean that Ireland would be able to ratify the Istanbul Convention in 2018.
“Right now the intention is to be absolutely sure that we can ratify the convention in the first quarter of 2018, but I would hope those two items of legislation could be dealt with before the summer of next year,” she said in the Dail on Friday.
The Domestic Violence Bill has been updated to include a ban on forced marriages, and to close a loophole which had allowed those under 18 to marry. There is limited evidence of forced marriages taking place in Ireland, but the government had said that the offence, by its nature, is hidden and often unreported.
The updated bill will also enable a court to grant a safety or barring order so that victims of abusecould stop perpetrators from contacting them electronically. Victims will also be offered court accompaniment with a friend, family member, relative or support worker. When a perpetrator breaches an order, the victim can give evidence via video link to prevent intimidation. Victim anonymity will be protected in criminal cases, unless their anonymity is waived or a court order is in place.
Those who live with their abuser will now be able to apply for an eight-day barring order. Domestic abuse orders had previously relied on a victim being married to or having children with her or his abuser.
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Women’s Aid had called on the government to update the domestic abuse bill, which was supposed to be enacted in the first quarter of this year, with greater legal protection for younger women in dating relationships who may be experiencing abuse but do not live with their perpetrator.
The Rape Crisis Network Ireland reported yesterday that 65 per cent of rape victims do not report their crime to the gardai or other formal authorities. Clíona Saidléar, the executive director of the RCNI, said she believes this is because 85 per cent of victims knew their perpetrator.
New figures from the central statistics office yesterday showed a 6.6 per cent increase in sexual offences between January and September this year, compared with the year before.
There is no qualitative data examining how many people in Ireland have been victims of sexual crime. The first Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland study was carried out in 2002. The government has not yet made available the €1 million funding required for a second report. Ms Saidléar said this meant the scale of the problem in Ireland was not being measured.
“RCNI has received no funding from the child and family agency, Tusla, for two years,” Ms Saidléar said. “RCNI made the decision to continue operating our globally innovative data collection system without the support of Tusla, as there is no other mechanism possible to give voice to these survivors who are otherwise silenced”
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Article 11 of the Istanbul Convention states that each country must collect its own data and research on sexual violence. The RCNI is currently discussing with Tusla if or how it could share some of the data it collects on victims’ experiences with the state agency.
“There are lawyers involved,” Ms Saidléar said. “Because there are a huge amount of data protection issues around it as well.”
The government has now committed to defining consent in law, listing situations in which victims could not have agreed to sex. Examples of non-consensual sex will include situations in which a person is unconscious or asleep, too intoxicated to consent, threatened with force or deceived, and unlawfully detained.
Ms Fitzgerald told the Oireachtas justice committee earlier this month that she was adding an amendment to last year’s Sexual Offences Bill which would legally clarify cases where victims had been raped.
Ms Saidléar said it was important that the legal non-consent definition was not an exhaustive list, so that victims could be protected from new kinds of non-consensual sex which may emerge and need to be defined.