I wish to raise a number of issues. This week the Women's Aid Annual Impact Report 2021 was published. I find the contents of it shocking. Its findings are deeply disturbing. We have a persistent and profound problem in Ireland with violence against women. I will quote some of the statistics. According to Women's Aid, 33,831 disclosures of abuse were made during 2021. This represents a deterioration on previous years and may be associated in some way with Covid. It means there were 100 cases of domestic abuse every day. Every 15 minutes a domestic abuse incident takes place. That is 24-7 and 365 days a year. In 28,096 cases the targets of this abuse are women. That is one per hour. Every hour, 24-7, a woman is abused or targeted in some way in this Republic. There were 5,735 cases of violence against children. That also represents approximately one case per hour on a 24-7 basis. I am sorry, it is one assault on a woman every 15 minutes and one assault on a child every hour. We have a major problem with the way we treat women and children. We have a history of it going back to the mother and baby homes. We treat our citizens with contempt. This is something I will return to next week in relation to the broader issue of abuse and harm to children in this country. We also had more than 400 disclosures of rape to Women's Aid during 2021. That is, every single day in this Republic a woman is raped in the home, which is supposed to be a place of safety - for those who have homes.

In that context, I return to a subject I also find very disturbing. That is the broader societal context. It has come to my attention that the Defence Forces, under the Defence Act 1954, continue to investigate and try cases of sex assault. I got a clarification that in sex assault cases where both the perpetrator and the victim are Defence Forces members and the alleged offence occurred on military property, under the Defence Act 1954, the perpetrator is usually tried by court martial. That is completely unacceptable. That is akin to the system in which the church dealt internally with its own abusers and rapists of children. We cannot allow the Defence Forces to investigate themselves in that matter. I am aware of many cases of serious sex assaults on both male and female members where the charges are broken down into lesser section 168 charges under the Defence Act and these are minor administrative charges. As a consequence, they are masking and concealing the actual level of the problem within the Defence Forces. This also has the effect of sex offenders in our armed forces then not being subject to the provisions of the Sex Offenders Act. I would therefore like a debate in the House. I would like to know how many sex offenders tried by court martial in our Defence Forces over the last 22 years since I drew attention to this have been notified to the sex offenders register because I am also aware of rapists in the Army who were not properly dealt with and then went on to rape women in the broader community.

The Defence Forces purport to defend the State against external and internal aggression. If it is not a safe place for 51% of the population it is not fit for that purpose. We really need to draw attention to this. In conclusion, I raised 22 years ago that all matters of sexual assault within our Army, Naval Service and Air Corps should be investigated by An Garda Síochána. I raised this 22 years ago and it has not changed. They are still doing it internally and still covering it up. This is not just a case of "me too", but a case of "we too". In the context of the broader societal problem and in the specific case of the Defence Forces, each of us has a responsibility to bring pressure to bear on the Minister for Defence, the Secretary General of the Department and the General Staff to straighten up and fly right in this regard.

I agree fully with Senator Clonan's remarks and especially his closing ones. I assure him of my own support for his work in the House in highlighting, and I hope addressing, those issues.

I want to again ask the Government to move the Bill on holding a referendum that would extend the vote to Irish citizens outside the State in presidential elections. Members will know this is a long-term call that has been made since well before my time in the Oireachtas, and it has been led by civic society in the North but also by diaspora groups and networks throughout the world. It is also a programme for Government commitment, and the Government said just a number of months ago that it planned to hold that referendum before its term ends. If it is serious about that, I encourage it to introduce this legislation, whether in this House or the Lower House. There is nothing negative or regressive about enfranchising citizens with the most basic of entitlements, and that is an entitlement to vote for the President.

I always find it deeply frustrating when, every St. Patrick's Day, Government representatives travel the world and rightly acknowledge our diaspora and encourage further investment from diaspora networks around the world, yet will not enfranchise them with that vote, when they have the ability and the opportunity to do so. I again call for that legislation to be moved.

Alongside that, given the pandemic and everything else, we have not had statements from the Minister with responsibility for the diaspora in this House in this Seanad. I believe it would be timely, right and appropriate that we would hear about supports for our diaspora community, particularly older and more vulnerable Irish citizens, as communities emerge from isolation and from the pandemic. Diaspora networks and community centres are vital in the work they do and we support them. I would like to hear what the Government is doing in that regard.

In closing, I call for statements on Palestine. I attended a very hard-hitting briefing hosted by Senator Frances Black yesterday, with Hagai El-Ad, who is the executive director of B’Tselem, Israel's premier human rights organisation, and Raji Sourani, who is a director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend all of it. We say very often in regard to Palestine and the apartheid regime that is being implemented against Palestinians that we could not help but be moved, but there is a part of me that is tired of being moved about this and tired of having to extend my sympathies and solidarity. As individual parliamentarians but, more importantly, collectively, as an Oireachtas, and in particular with the Government’s position on the UN Security Council and the limited time it has left, we want to hear from the Minister for Foreign Affairs what the Government is doing to support Palestinians who are suffering and enduring apartheid. We want to hear what it is doing to challenge the brutality of the Israeli regime on the world stage, when it is so flagrantly implementing that apartheid regime and so flagrantly in breach of international law and all accepted conventions. I call for that and I have no doubt Senator Black will elaborate on that.