Attendees at a rally outside Leinster House have called for “zero tolerance of violence against women”.
To mark St. Bridget's Day, demonstrators gathered to demand that the Government’s new strategy on domestic and gender-based violence be implemented as a matter of urgency.
“We’ll never have full equality for women while women are being harassed and controlled and abused in their relationships, assaulted and murdered,” National Women's Council Director Orla O'Connor told the rally.
“This year and in recent weeks, we’ve seen horrific murders across the island… This is not inevitable; violence against women isn’t something that women have to live with and just put up with.
“We can do more to protect women and we must.
“We must see an end to gender based violence, we must see it as the crisis that it is.”
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Among the crowd were the family of Natalie McNally, who was killed in December last year when she was 15 weeks pregnant.
“There should be zero tolerance of violence against women,” Natalie’s aunt, Bernie McNally, told Newstalk.
“We need to redouble our efforts right across the country and get this stopped, this gender-based violence has to stop.
“We have to educate our children, we have to educate our son, we have to educate our menfolk, we have to educate our women.
“Everybody has to play a part here.”
Main image: The rally outside Leinster House.
