Combatting domestic, sexual and gender-based violence (DSGBV) and ensuring that victims and survivors receive the support and care they deserve are absolute priorities for this government.
There are commitments in the Programme for Government and in ‘Zero Tolerance’, the Third National Strategy on domestic, sexual and gender-based violence to enable individuals experiencing sexual or domestic violence to remain safely in their own homes, whenever possible, and my Department is working to develop policy in this area.
While figures regarding which party remains in the family home in cases of domestic violence are not currently collated, I recognise the importance of robust data in informing policy responses to DSGBV and have asked my officials to consider this particular data in the context of the overall approach to the data collection in this policy area.
The Deputy may be interested to know that the Central Statistics Office is currently in the process of developing a new DSGBV survey with Cuan and my Department. This new survey will be based on the EU Gender-Based Violence (EU-GBV) survey, which will be carried out in most EU member states next year under the direction of Eurostat.
This new CSO survey will provide statistics on the forms of violence experienced by women and men in Ireland, including physical, sexual, economic, psychological and technology-facilitated abuse. It will also capture information about the contexts and relationships within which the violence occurs.
The questionnaire for the new DSGBV survey will be developed and tested later this year via a series of focus group meetings with victims and survivors, and there will also be a pilot field test in Quarter 4 of this year. Following this development process, the survey is expected to 'go-live' in late-2027 across all countries in Europe with results available in 2028.
Final decisions about the content of the questionnaire, the design of the survey and the statistics arising from it are the responsibility of the CSO, which is an independent agency operating under the Statistics Act 1993.
