Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald has said “violence against women is a massive societal problem and yesterday’s court judgement and others like it raise fundamental questions about how the government and the judicial system deal with violence against women.”

Ms. McDonald said:

“I want to extend my solidarity and support to Natasha O’Brien, who spoke out so bravely yesterday after the man convicted of beating her unconscious was given a suspended sentence.

“Violence against women is a scourge in our society; too often women and girls do not feel safe. This case and others like it raise fundamental questions about how government and the judicial system deal with violence against women.

“We need an examination of sentencing and judicial training in cases of violence against women and we need to ensure that the state is collecting information and data on domestic, sexual and gender based violence which is crucial to ensuring that we have a system that works. Today Ireland lags far behind other states in compiling such basic information.

“It speaks volumes that this happened in the same week that Women’s Aid reported the highest ever number of domestic abuse disclosures in its fifty year history. The government set up a new statutory agency but the reality is that nine counties still have no shelter for women and children suffering domestic abuse, the third National Strategy on Domestic Sexual and Gender Based violence is massively underfunded and we still have no national services development plan.

“We need a change of approach. We need to start taking the issue of violence against women seriously and that needs to start at governmental and judicial level.”