THE ISSUE OF domestic abuse dominated Leaders’ Questions today following the publication of a report by Women’s Aid, which showed record demand for their services last year.

Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon delivered a passionate speech arguing that the problem needs to be reframed as a men’s issue.

He agreed with Labour leader Ivana Bacik that Ireland is now dealing with an epidemic of domestic abuse and railed against the notion that domestic abuse is only perpetrated by “monsters”.

He also argued that social media is “supercharging” domestic abuse.

“This didn’t happen by accident. We’ve allowed this violence to grow, and I’m fearful about where it is headed, because we’re now living in a culture where perpetrators of abuse are not only tolerated, they are celebrated.

“They are the President of the United States and sports stars with multi-million euro contracts.

“Influencers poison our young men with misogyny packaged as self-help. This network of anti-women communities online, full of grifters, abusers and con men, is flooding social media with hate and as a State, we’re doing almost nothing to stop it,” he said. 

Gannon also referred to the case of Irish woman Jill Meagher, who was raped and murdered by a stranger in Australia in 2012. 

“Her husband, Tom, wrote about the monster myth. In that book, he explained to us that abusers are often thought of as monsters, broken, unrecognisable, but they’re not.

“They’re often our colleagues, our neighbours, our friends, and that myth lets all of us off the hook.

“Like the man shouting at a woman in a bar, the hand on her back that she didn’t invite, the so called jokes about rape being shared in WhatsApp groups. That is how violence is normalised.

“The epidemic of men’s violence against women continues to be framed as a woman’s issue across all facets of society, but minister, make no mistake, men’s violence against women is a crisis for men to be part of solving.

“We’ve created a society where there is such a pervasive sense of male violence against women that we’ve had to coin the phrase femicide to describe the epidemic. Even the very term allows men to evade accountability for this ongoing crisis.

“As men, we need to do more than shake our heads. We need to call it out when we see it, because to be silent is to be complicit,” Gannon said. 

The issue was raised also raised by Sinn Féin and Labour, with Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald telling the Dáil that all the statistics are going in the wrong direction. 

In the last year, reported instances of physical abuse were up 22%, sexual abuse increased by 30%, emotional abuse was up 15%, and economic abuse was up 5%.

A third of women who reached out to Women’s Aid for help were subjected to abuse by an ex-partner.

“Behind these statistics are real women and their children, real lives shattered,” McDonald told the Dáil.

“The report reflects that government must do a far better job to achieve zero tolerance of violence against women.”

Labour leader Ivana Bacik acknowledged that progress has been made in recent years, noting the establishment of the government’s domestic abuse agency Cuan, but she said, despite this, the scale of domestic abuse in Ireland has reached epidemic levels. 

She also said the suite of laws in place to deal with domestic violence, while welcome, are “ineffective” if gardaí are not adequately equipped to respond to women who report domestic abuse in the first instance. 

The Women’s Aid report today highlighted a huge shortfall in the garda response to domestic abuse, with 44% of women surveyed saying they found the garda response “unhelpful”. 

Responding to Bacik, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan acknowledged that not all gardaí have specialised training to respond to domestic abuse, however, he maintained that women who are then referred to specialised garadaí have a positive experience. 

The Justice Minister agreed with Gannon on the idea that domestic abuse needs to be reframed as a men’s problem. 

“This is a societal issue, in fact, it’s more of an issue for men and boys than it is for women, because regrettably, my sex are the sex that perpetrate this violence against women to the large extent.

“So we have to start warning boys and young men about the unacceptability of using violence in a relationship,” O’Callaghan said.

He added that pornography “must be having an extraordinary impact on young men, because it presents women in a very submissive, malleable manner”.

“And we just need to warn people at a young age, [through] education that it is so unacceptable to use violence in a relationship. So not all the solutions are through the criminal justice system.”