The Women's Aid 2024 annual report published last week paints a harrowing picture of domestic abuse in this country. Among the most disturbing findings is that 188 pregnant, post-partum or post-termination women were supported by Women's Aid last year due to intimate partner abuse. This is not just a statistic; it is a national disgrace. Tragically, this issue is not abstract. Just this weekend, a 27-year-old mother of two was murdered in Donaghadee in Northern Ireland. She was 34 weeks' pregnant; two lives lost, two victims. Similarly, let us not forget the case of Ailish Walsh, a young woman from Dublin who was 22 weeks' pregnant when she was stabbed to death by her partner in 2022. The court heard he intended to kill her unborn child but no charges were brought for that death.

While both cases are from the UK, we have similar shortcomings in our own laws. Fellow Members of the House, the Pregnancy Loss (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025 currently before this House rightly recognises the profound loss experienced by families whose babies die before the 24-week threshold for stillborn registration. This is a welcome step but does not go far enough. We must now ask, where is the legal protection for the unborn victims of violence? When a pregnant woman is attacked and her unborn child dies as a result, our laws do not treat that as a loss of a human life. This is a moral and legal failing. I intend to support any legislation to address this gap because justice must be done, not just for the women who suffer but for the unborn children who die unseen and unaccounted for.

I want to raise a couple of matters on the Order of Business but directly refer to the matter raised by Senator Keogan. My heart goes out to the family, friends and children of the latest victim of gender-based violence on this island. Sarah Montgomery was murdered. She was pregnant. She was the mother of two children. When are we going to get real as a society? The number of women, and mothers, being killed in their own homes at the hands of people known to them is shocking. We should not be shocked at this stage because it happens so frequently. We need a whole-of-society approach to fixing this problem because it affects women right across the board. We need to talk about this more and to drill down into the reasons this is happening and why there has been an increase. The report published a few weeks ago contained some really shocking statistics. It is the greatest challenge that lies ahead of us as a society.

I wish to refer to two other issues if I may, a Chathaoirligh. We all support decreasing costs for our third level students, but let us be real about this - it is the Minister for Finance who holds the purse strings. That is where the power lies. The Minister for Finance during the previous budget, Deputy Chambers, issued the funding to the Department of higher education to decrease the fees paid by families. It is up to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to do that this year. Let us be very clear that is where the power lies on this. I am very glad all our colleagues on the Fine Gael side are on board with that, so let us go away and talk to their Minister for Finance about that.