Sarah Harte: Why Ireland still fails to learn from domestic homicides — and how we can change that

Ireland urgently needs domestic homicide reviews to learn from preventable partner killings and close gaps in frontline responses

The house in Kilnaboy, Co Clare, where the bodies of Claire and Joe Collins were found. Picture: Eamon Ward

It felt like a truly sad week. In Co Clare, an inquest into the deaths of Claire Collins and her husband Joe Collins was returned with an open verdict in Claire’s death and a verdict of suicide in his case.

There is no way to imagine what the Meere and Collins families have gone through and what they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. It’s your worst nightmare. On November 9, 2023, Joe Collins' brother, Brian Collins, alerted the emergency services about the two deaths. The gardaí found the front door of the house open and a note on the stairs, which instructed them to check upstairs and outside. Joe Collins's body was found lifeless at the back of the house. Claire Collins died from asphyxia — she had been smothered with a pillow.

Claire Collins: The inquest found a ‘third party’ had smothered her. Picture: Garda/PA Wire

Coroner Isobel O'Dea said the appropriate verdict was suicide in the case of Joe Collins and an open verdict in the case of Claire Collins, as the evidence showed it was not an accident or self-inflicted and not a suicide. The inquest found a ‘third party’ had smothered Claire, and there was evidence of defensive wounds on her wrists, suggesting she fought back.

You know, when we were growing up, as young women, we were taught to fear the stranger on the street. The guy who would jump out at you from behind the bushes. It’s not that this character doesn’t exist, which is why there are Reclaim the Night Marches, but what we weren’t taught is that women are more likely to be murdered by their partner, ex-partner or a man known to them in their homes.

According to the latest Women’s Aid figures published last month, between 1996 and March 2025, 275 women have died violently — 179 of those women were killed in their own homes. Only 13% (where the cases were resolved) were killed by a stranger.

At a domestic abuse conference recently (I work in the area), we considered why the rates of coercive control and domestic homicide are so high across the island. In the Republic of Ireland, An Garda Síochána gets a domestic abuse call every 10 minutes and responded to 65,000 incidents of domestic abuse last year — an increase of 45% in the previous four years. 

A report of domestic abuse is made to the PSNI every 16 minutes — domestic abuse accounts for a fifth of all crimes in Northern Ireland, and the femicide rate is the second highest in Europe.

At the conference, Noelle Collins, training and programmes manager at Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid, spoke about the benefits of conducting domestic homicide reviews, which are not currently carried out in the Republic but are in place in the North.

A domestic homicide review is a multi-agency review of the circumstances surrounding a death. The purpose is not to apportion blame but to understand what led to the death and how we might learn from those mistakes to prevent future deaths. 

A domestic homicide review could provide families with answers, but it could also highlight gaps in the response for frontline professionals, including gardaí. Essentially, without these domestic homicide reviews, we count women’s deaths in this country, but we do not account for them.

In 2016, Clodagh Hawe was killed by Alan Hawe, who also killed their three sons, Liam, Niall and Ryan. In 2019, the then minister for justice Charlie Flanagan met with Clodagh Hawe’s sister, Jacqueline Connolly, and her mother, Mary Coll. He promised to introduce domestic homicide reviews. The commitment to carry out domestic homicide reviews was included in the programme for government but subsequently dropped from the latest programme for government. 

Can somebody tell me why? Current minister for justice Jim O’Callaghan has been on the job a wet week but has gotten off to a strong start. Maybe he can look into this.

Those working in the field understand that the overwhelming majority of domestic homicides follow a pattern or, as Professor Jane Monckton Smith says, an eight-stage timeline. In her seminal book In Control, Ms Monckton Smith explodes the cultural myth that killers in domestic homicides snap and lose control. In reality, a lot of men who kill their partners are very much in control.

We've been relying on the 'crime of passion, spontaneous red-mist' explanation [of killing] forever — and it's just not true. If you start looking at all these cases, there's planning, determination, there's always coercive control.

Ms Monckton Smith, a former British police officer and an acknowledged expert in coercive control and femicide, studied and reviewed hundreds of domestic homicides. Using models that had been used in serial killings, she found a clear pattern. 

Clodagh Hawe's coffin arriving at the church of St Mary in Castlerahan in Co Cavan for her funeral in September 2016. Picture: RollingNews.ie

She says: “They are the most predictable homicides, which is why we can and should be preventing them.” 

If you want to prevent domestic homicides, you need to understand the red flags and pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour commonly adopted by perpetrators towards their partners preceding the murder.

One statistic is that about 60-70% of femicide victims experienced domestic abuse or coercive control before their deaths. American research says 85% of domestic homicide cases have high levels of planning.

In 2016, the priest at the Hawe family’s funeral in Cavan said, “It is not for us to seek answers or to surmise about behaviour. We all are trying to cope with a tragedy beyond our understanding.” I can see where he was coming from. 

I’m afraid, though, we have to respectfully ask the hard, painful questions if we want to try and prevent predictable domestic homicides while always remembering that there are real people behind these stories and loved ones left behind grappling to understand and find a way to go on.

As I write this somewhere in Ireland, another man is planning a murder or is moving through Monckton’s Smith eight-stage timeline. Someone who believes he has the right to control and own his wife. We have to stop him.

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.