‘Beyond worrying’ – Kilkenny TD says State is failing domestic abuse victims

Domestic violence victims in Kilkenny and across the country are being failed by the State, a local TD has claimed.

Deputy Kathleen Funchion spoke out in the wake of distressing findings contained in the recently published Women’s Aid annual report.

The report revealed there has been a massive 43% increase in contacts with the domestic violence service last year.

And this follows separate reports over the weekend that an internal Garda investigation found thousands of 999 domestic violence calls from children, migrants and women from the travelling community went unanswered throughout the pandemic.

Deputy Funchion, who is also Sinn Féin frontbench spokesperson on chlidren, said: “The stark reality is that Covid-19 has had an enormous impact on victims of domestic violence.

“The data contained within this report shows that the issue of domestic violence continues to be a blight on our society.

“Services working in the area of domestic violence warned that the scale and level of the problem would intensify during consecutive lockdowns and depressingly they have been proved right.”

The Carlow-Kilkenny TD (pictured  below) expressed deep concern over revelations that cancelled 999 calls were not followed up.

“This disgraceful practice is beyond worrying, especially considering that women are reporting to domestic violence services horrific physical abuse and attacks inflicted on them and their children throughout the pandemic,” she added.

“Ireland also has a long history of letting women and children down within the family law courts system.

“Unfortunately, it also seems, that those tasked with serving and protecting our citizens and those residing here are letting our most vulnerable women and children down at the very first point of contact to emergency services by not answering their calls, deleting them or simply not following them up.”