Out of 47 European countries, Ireland has the fewest number of judges per 100,000 of population. I ask the Leader for a debate on that issue and also on the issue of barristers defending and prosecuting cases of sexual violence having, as they do in other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom, to undertake training on the impact of sexual violence on victims. That does not happen, but it should be mandatory.

Currently, only 17% of judges in the High Court and only 12.5% of judges in the Supreme Court are women. Again, the figures are not in proportion with those in the rest of Europe. Too often, the judges presiding in cases of rape, child abuse and those involving minorities are men who have been educated in private schools and are largely conservative and middle class. Their number is way out of proportion with the rest of the population and that must change. However, it can only change by law, as we did in this House when we changed the requirement for political parties to have gender quotas. Forty per cent of members of State boards must be women, but that has not happened. The problem in having the same group of people sitting in the Judiciary is that there is group think. They think the same way about the impact of violence on women. We have seen suspended sentences being handed down in cases in which-----

Senator-----

I have not said anything inappropriate.

The Senator's time is up.

My time is not up yet. They were cases in which the perpetrators admitted that they had raped somebody, yet suspended sentences were handed down. This week, in regard to the house of horrors, three judges said the sentence should be reduced in one of the most horrific cases of abuse in the history of the State.

The Senator's time is up.

All of these judges are male, middle class and went to private schools. That has got to change.