Women gathered outside ail Eireann the Dail yesterday to mark an international day opposing violence against women and called on society not to become complacent about the issue. With banners reading "27 women murdered in Ireland in the last 18 months", "Rights for travelling women" and "Tougher sentences for violence against women", the group of about 150 listened to speakers who urged the Government to take action. The protest included street theatre to highlight the issue.
Ms Gay Cunningham, chairwoman of Women's Aid, said: `'We'll make damn sure society will not become complacent about violence against women."
The acting director of Women's Aid, Ms Roisin McDermott, asked: "Where are the voices of the non-abusing men?" Women alone could not stop the violence. They were its victims and its survivors.
"It is only as a society pulling together condemning all forms of violence against women and children that we can move forward into the 21st century and honestly say we are dealing with this issue," she said.
Applications to the courts for legal protection had risen by nearly 50 per cent in the last two years. Women's Aid received between 8,000 and 10,000 calls to its helpline every year. The most recent research showed that 18 per cent of women had been abused in Ireland. They knew this to be an extremely conservative figure.
"Politically, we have never taken into account the economic and social costs of violence against women and children to all of us in this society," she told the group.
"Are we ever going to wake up, take our heads out of the sand and begin to condemn violence against women for the serious crime it is?" she asked.
The programme director of Oxfam, Ms Mary van Lisehout, said it was their right and responsibility to bring violence against women from behind the cloak of "privacy" and into the full glare of international human rights laws.
Ms Berry Doyle, of Wexford Women's Action, said that in Ireland violence against women had been perceived as family, cultural and personal, because of the Irish attitude towards family. This minimised and trivialised the whole issue by adding to the barriers of silence already surrounding it. After the meeting, a small delegation met Ms Liz O'Donnell, the Minister of State with a responsibility for human rights and development and called on her to set up an independent human rights commission.