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Seanad
‹ An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

Gender-based violence and Walk Out

Summary

Senator Fitzpatrick stresses the rising number of women killed violently and the importance of the Walk Out for Women campaign; the Cathaoirleach thanks participants and condemns abuse and coercive control.

I thank you personally, a Chathaoirligh, for assisting outside today with the Walk Out for Women campaign. There was cross-party turnout here, as could be expected. The Walk Out for Women campaign is a really important campaign. It is a simple exercise that sends a strong message that there can be no place in our society for abuse of women. Women's Aid's femicide watch told us that, by July of this year, eight women in our country had died under violent circumstances. Now the campaign says that that number has grow to ten by the end of September. This is a real problem, and behind every one of those statistics is a woman, a family and a community. I commend Jim O'Callaghan, the Minister for justice, and the wider Government on what they are doing to address gender-based violence, but there is an onus on all of us - as elected representatives, but also just as human beings - to say loud and clear that there will be no tolerance of abuse of women and no tolerance of coercive behaviour, bullying behaviour or violence against women. I commend everybody who partook in the Walk Out for Women today and say to all of us, let us continue to be vigilant every moment of every day, wherever we are. We need to protect our girls, we need to protect our women and we need to protect one another.

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Mark Daly An Cathaoirleach Fianna Fáil

Thanks to everybody who participated in the Walk Out for Women. It is important that the Oireachtas stand with those who are suffering from abuse and coercive control and, obviously, those families who have suffered bereavement as a result of gender-based violence, oftentimes at the hands of people they know intimately. It is something I think we all stand together on.

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