“Today is a day of hope. Our sister, our absolutely amazing sister has her voice heard. Her voice is gone, but we will never stop fighting for Jennifer.”

So today in the Seanad, I introduced my Bill in terms of establishing a domestic violence register. This is an important day and very much informed by the work that my colleague, Deputy Jim O’Callaghan has been doing and also by Jason Poole. On the 17th of April 2021.

Jason’s sister, Jennifer was very sadly murdered by a former partner. Now it turned out afterwards that her former partner had actually been in jail for two years for a previous domestic violence assault. If Jennifer had been aware of this, there is no doubt that she would be alive today.

So what I have introduced is the Domestic Violence Register, which will work in the same way as a Sexual Offenders Register where if somebody is convicted of domestic violence or coercive control, that they go on a register and it is their duty and responsibility to inform Garda where they live in a country where we’ve had 256 deaths, violent deaths of women since 1996, 87% of those by men known to them.

It’s absolutely crucial that we do what we can to protect more women from dying violently like this.