Reporting by Aoife-Grace Moore in The Journal last week highlighted the disconnect between what women are advised to do following a sexual assault and how the process of getting support and justice through our legal system operates in practice. As reported, a woman was sexually assaulted by a stranger in a car park. She escaped and immediately ran back to the hotel she had just left. She reported what happened and engaged fully with An Garda Síochána. She did everything the State asks survivors to do. Despite this, the case did not proceed because the DPP said the issue of consent could not be demonstrated to the high standard of proof required for trial even though there was CCTV footage of the attack. If an assault by a stranger recorded by CCTV followed by immediate reporting cannot satisfy the evidential threshold of consent, we have to ask ourselves whether our system truly understands the reality of sexual violence.

The 2025 sexual offences Bill is in progress. I welcome that legislation, which we hope will introduce an objective reasonable standard regarding the confirmation of consent. This reform is crucial if we want to empower survivors to seek justice. The legislation must be robust enough to deliver that justice. Survivors engaging with the system in search of justice need to have confidence that, when they come forward, the system will be capable of dealing with their case fairly. Reporting sexual violence is, in itself, traumatic. To go through that process only to be told what happened to you does not mean the legal test of non-consent is devastating.

Reporting last week highlighted that Ireland has a sexual offence rate 43% higher than the European average. That figure should give us all pause and cause to reflect on why Ireland has such starkly higher figures than our European counterparts. We need to have a conversation about the rates of sexual violence in Ireland. Many women still do not report it when they are assaulted. As few as one third of sexual offence cases submitted to the Garda are pursued for prosecution. That is really low. This is a bleak picture when it comes to justice for survivors.

I would love for us to have a debate in this Chamber about strategies for stamping out sexual violence and about which strategies are working and which are not effective. We have our zero tolerance strategy but, with these figures, we cannot say we are anywhere close to achieving that.