Jim O'Callaghan
Ceist:74. Deputy Jim O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Justice and Equality the estimated cost of domestic violence to the economy per year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4178/19]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 30 January 2019
Ceisteanna (74)
Freagraí scríofa
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has completed a study to identify and recommend appropriate methodologies to measure the cost of gender-based and intimate partner violence in EU-28 Member States. Three main types of costs were identified: lost economic output, provision of services, including health, legal, social and specialised; and the personal (physical and emotional) impact on the victim. The report is structured around these types of costs, providing accounts of the investigations into the methodologies in each of these fields found in the relevant literature.
The EIGE report concluded that the detailed case study it reported on would not be easy to replicate in other countries. This is largely because the data requirements are high and the field of gender-based and intimate partner violence has insufficient data collected to meet these requirements in most countries. EIGE concluded that there is currently insufficient data to robustly cost the impact of intimate partner violence separately for each EU-28 Member State.
My Department has also considered this issue and concluded that methodological and data deficiencies militated against a robust cost estimation of the impact of domestic violence in Ireland.
To illustrate the difficulties involved, a Council of Europe Study examined a range of estimates of the cost of gender-based violence. Depending on data and methods used, the lowest cost estimate was just 1.6% of the highest cost estimate, rendering any estimation meaningless in the context of such a broad divergence.
My Department has engaged with various EIGE meetings in relation to administrative data on gender-based violence and will continue to do so.