Lives of 23 women killed in the month of April remembered
Nicola Sweeney from Cork was murdered in April 2002.
The lives of 23 women who have been killed in the month of April over the past 25 years were remembered at the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality, on sexual, domestic and gender-based violence.
The women, including Nicola Sweeney from Cork, Irene White from Louth, Clare woman Emer O’Loughlin and Rose Patterson from Clonakilty, Co Cork, were named by Fine Gael’s Equality spokeswoman Jennifer Carroll MacNeill during the hearing.
She also included Wexford mothers Ciara Dunne from Monageer and Lorraine Flood from Clonroche, who were both killed, along with their children, by their husbands.
Ms Dunne and her children Leanne and Shania were killed in April 2007 by her husband and the girls’s father, Adrian Dunne. He subsequently took his own life.
Ms Flood was killed with her children Julie and Mark in April 2008 by Diarmuid Flood, who also took his own life.
Ms Carroll MacNeill told the committee hearing that unless the life of each woman killed in Ireland was acknowledged, “they were voiceless in death and remain voiceless unless we acknowledge them here".
The Oireachtas committee, chaired by Labour leader Ivana Bacik, was set up to address the recommendations made in a report published a year ago by the Citizens Assembly on gender equality.
Among the recommendations in that report was that female genital mutilation should be recognised in this country as a ground for seeking asylum. It also recommended the provision of culturally sensitive, specialised services for victims and survivors of FGM.
Addressing the committee, Dr Salome Mbugua of AkiDwA, which works with migrant women in Ireland, said the organisation estimates that almost 6,000 women living in Ireland have undergone FGM.
“Survivors are living with the psychological and physical consequences of this serious act of violence, and young girls are at risk of this harmful traditional procedure," she said.
"We have repeatedly called on the Government to establish an interdepartmental working group to coordinate the response to FGM, to prevent it from happening to young girls and to provide adequate support to survivors. 2020 saw Ireland’s first ever conviction of this human rights abuse, which sends a strong message that FGM will not be tolerated, but we need to take steps at preventing girls from being cut, before the criminal act is ever committed.”
Meanwhile, chief executive of Safe Ireland, Mary McDermott, said there needed to be permanent accommodation in place for women fleeing from domestic violence.
“National Housing Policy does not recognise women in domestic violence circumstances as homeless." she said. "This is an outrage. Therefore they fall substantially outside the net of current interventions and priorities.”
