The Government-mandated lockdown restrictions are causing immeasurable harm to the most vulnerable in this country. Sadly there has been a dramatic upsurge in the incidence of domestic violence. At the height of the previous lockdown, Women's Aid responded to a 43% increase in calls from women who were trapped with abusers at home. Women's Aid expects that it will be responding to thousands more pleas for help from victims over the course of the current lockdown.

Figures released today by Safe Ireland show that almost 2,000 women and 411 children were in receipt of some support from domestic violence services. Job losses, remote working, self-isolation and other measures related to the lockdown are already having an impact on victims. The reality that abusers are at home all of the time is terrifying. Many women and children will spend the next few weeks in suffocating circumstances with their abusers because of the Government-imposed lockdown. This ugly vista is largely out of the public gaze, beyond the long arm of the law and outside the lens of the media. We do not see the evil of domestic violence depicted graphically on the evening news in the way we see stricken patients in ICU gasping for air but it is every bit as tragic and real.

As a woman and parent, I would like to give particular mention to the plight of women and children suffering as a result of this increase in violence. Women and children who are the collateral damage from this Government's inhumane and ill-conceived rolling lockdown strategy. The toll that domestic violence is taking on the health and well-being of women, children and families must be taken into account in the decision to end lockdown as soon as possible. I implore the Government not the turn a blind eye to the ill effects of lockdown. The Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Health should have the collective courage and sense to pursue a better strategy to genuinely living with the virus instead of hiding from it indefinitely, all the while ignoring the damage done to the health and wealth of this nation.