Cabinet to be given details of statutory domestic violence agency

Justice Minister Simon Harris has said that draft legislation to establish a statutory domestic violence agency will be brought to Cabinet within a month. Picture: Brian Lawless

Draft legislation to establish a statutory domestic violence agency will be brought to Cabinet within a month, Justice Minister Simon Harris has said.

The agency was announced as part of the Government’s ‘zero tolerance’ strategy to tackle domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence (DSGBV).

A key focus of the legislation will include a plan to commission and fund support services for victims of DSGBV and people who may be at risk of any such form of violence.

The full-time statutory agency, which it is planned will take office next January, will be tasked with a number of issues including delivering refuge spaces and safe houses, leading on awareness campaigns designed to reduce the incidence of DSGBV in society, and implementing government policy.

Mr Harris said the agency will play a crucial role in developing and collecting data and conducting research into DSGBV.

“The minister for justice, myself now, and Minister [Helen] McEntee before and after, will be the people with the political responsibility to co-ordinate this," said Mr Harris. 

"Political accountability will still go through updates to the Cabinet committee. But having a group of people working in an agency that’s full-time, whose only focused job is co-ordinating the delivery of the strategy, I think, is a really, really good thing.” 

'Great potential'

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre CEO Noeline Blackwell said the agency has great potential if the strategy is implemented in full and is adequately resourced.

Mr Harris said the Government is taking major steps to tackle DSGBV and, before the summer, the State will pass laws to double the maximum sentence for assault causing harm and legislation to allow the courts to electronically tag sex offenders.

He said there is no law to implement a cultural change and talking to men, young and old, about consent, gender equality, and healthy relations needs to happen.

The minister said he believes this is where the work of the new agency can really help.

He said a domestic violence register is something that he is “instinctively” in support of but he wants to see the findings of research being conducted by NGOs on the matter. He does not want to suggest or mislead anyone that it is an easy thing to do, he added.

Familicide study

Meanwhile, Mr Harris said he intends to shortly consider a study on familicide and domestic homicide.

The report was completed and given to the Department of Justice a number of months ago and it has also been submitted to gardaí.

Former justice minister Charlie Flanagan commissioned the independent, specialist study in 2019 following a campaign by the bereaved family of Clodagh Hawe, who was murdered by her husband, Alan, in 2016. He also murdered their three children before taking his own life.