Sir, – The proposed accommodation closure at Wexford Women’s Refuge drives home a simple truth, which is to our collective shame in this country and globally: women who suffer violence at home must just put up with it, because we are not willing to protect them.
I am just back from Uganda, where 60 per cent of women experience physical and sexual violence, most often from their partners at home. There are virtually no services for women in abusive relationships in Uganda. They are often sent back home to live or be killed in an abusive environment. This is in a country which is recovering from war and where the average person lives on an income of just over €1 per day.
Leaving Ugandan women without the protection of a refuge from violence is morally wrong. In Ireland, it is simply inexcusable. It highlights how we choose to share the resources we have and who we are prepared to leave out.
Let’s stop making the economy an excuse for denying women and children protection from the most appalling of abuses, at home or abroad. – Yours, etc,
CAOIMHE de BARRA,
Springhill Park,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.