Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2025-11-26
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Holly Cairns (SD), Cork South-West

What the Minister proposes to bring forward in relation to people's counselling notes is basically a new version of the status quo . It is that people's counselling notes can be used against them in court. I feel the need to very clearly break this down. We know that the court process retraumatises victims of sexual assault and rape. We know that the percentage of women who get justice for rape is absolutely minuscule as a result of that because people do not want to go to court. What is another way of looking at that? The percentage of people who are convicted is minuscule. That results in people being quite likely to get away with raping somebody. That is the reality. Why is the process traumatising? Let us look at it. One thing is your counselling notes being used against you in a trial. It is despicable. There is one very clear thing this Government could do to try to help the process, to try to make it less hostile towards victims, and that is an outright ban on people's counselling notes being used in court. Will the Government reconsider this?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-11-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:22+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-26