New sheriff Jim O’Callaghan took Leaders’ Questions. Expectations were modest…

There’s a new sheriff in town.

He moseyed into Dáil Éireann from the badlands of Ranelagh, all tooled up with his briefing notes, ready for his first day on the Leaders’ Questions beat.

Big Jim O’Callaghan.

“Go ahead, guys. Like, make my day?”

British ambassador to leave diplomatic service but remain in Dublin after ‘falling in love with the city’

Minister denies Sinn Féin’s claim anti-terrorism Bill contains a ‘Kneecap’ clause

Hospitals allowed to act like ‘independent republics’ for too long, says Minister for Health

The Dirty Jimmy of Dublin 4.

Maybe not.

With the Taoiseach and Tánaiste abroad on business, somebody had to represent the Government at Leaders’ Questions. O’Callaghan, the Minister for Justice, finally got the call.

How would he fare? Expectations were modest. His political persona is more PC Plod than maverick cop.

But Dublin 4 renegade, Mary Lou McDonald, might have been up for the scrap. Jim was careful not to draw her magnum-force ire upon himself. That’s what his boss Micheál is there for.

“You’ve got to ask yourself one question, Taoiseach: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?” That’s more or less the vibe at the start of their regular Dáil scuffles. It was infinitely more civilised with Big Jim on Wednesday.

As it happened, his debut at Leaders’ Questions coincided with a day when law and order matters were high on the political agenda. So, as a Minister for Justice and, until very recently, a practising senior counsel, he was lucky to be drafted in when his specialist subject was in the spotlight.

The newly published annual report from Women’s Aid was raised by Sinn Féin, Labour and the Social Democrats. It charts an alarming rise in the number of women contacting the charity to report abuse by partners and ex-partners including crimes of rape, sexual assault, physical attacks, coercive control and death threats to mothers and even their children.

Women’s Aid reached a grim milestone last year, receiving the highest number of disclosures and requests for help in its 50-year history.

O’Callaghan was very well informed on the new figures, on the current law and on the legislation he says he is bringing forward.

He thanked the Sinn Féin leader for raising the issue.

“In fact, at 11 o’clock this morning, I was down in Wood Quay and I launched that report.”

Not a bad start. Some people might have been thinking he was chosen for Leaders’ Questions precisely because of that.

He had nothing but praise for the excellent work done by Women’s Aid over the last 51 years.

Among the many shortcomings in the services available to victims, Mary Lou McDonald pointed to the continuing absence of a register of convicted domestic abusers which could protect women from repeat offenders.

“That’s the aim of legislation named in honour of Jennie Poole. Jennie was stabbed to death by her abuser in 2021 – a man with a history of violence against women. She didn’t know that. Neither did her family. Jennie was 24.”

Her brother Jason has been pushing hard to get such a register in place.

“I had the privilege last week of meeting Jason Poole,” the Minister replied, adding that “work is ongoing” in his department to find a way of making that information available.

Big Jim also made sure to credit his predecessor in Justice, Helen McEntee. She did a lot of work on domestic violence, an achievement that many of her online detractors seemed to view as evidence of galloping wokery and misandry in Government.

“It is something that I am not going to allow to become less significant than it was during her tenure,” Jim stressed.

He agreed with Mary Lou that the first response to a woman who is a victim of abuse should not be a rush to find a refuge space for her but to find a way to get her abuser out of the house.

On the day after the Taoiseach was berated for listing Government measures to ease the financial burden on families struggling with the rising cost of living (while apparently committing the crime of not sounding sufficiently sympathetic to their plight), his Minister for Justice had that angle covered.

“Behind each of these statistics is a story, and, really, we just can’t get lost in the narrative of statistics.”

Labour leader Ivana Bacik was not alone in calling the situation an epidemic. While she welcomed the measures which have been and will be introduced, she said these laws will be ineffective if gardaí, the first line of defence, did not implement them adequately.

The figures from Women’s Aid showed that almost half of the women who went to their local gardaí for help felt the response they received was “unhelpful”.

Big Jim went for the glass half full response: more than half of the women who contacted them felt they got a positive response.

He accepted there could be more training for officers, but dealing with the problem goes far deeper than that.

Domestic abuse should not be “compartmentalised” as a women’s issue, he said.

“It’s as much an issue for men and boys ... because, regrettably, my sex are the sex that perpetuate this violence against women to a large extent. We have to start warning boys and young men about the unacceptability of using violence in the relationship.”

This pre-empted the contribution from Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats, who said men’s violence against women was a crisis that men must be part of solving.

Violence against women is nothing new, but social media is supercharging it

“As men, we need to do more than shake our heads. We must call out violence when we see it because to be silent is to be complicit.”

Domestic violence is an “insidious” crime that “thrives in silence and shame and in the shadows but is everywhere, in every parish, every institution, every workplace.”

Gary fears for the future.

“Violence against women is nothing new, but social media is supercharging it ... We are now living in a culture where perpetrators of abuse are not only tolerated – they are celebrated. They are the president of the United States, they are sports stars with multimillion-euro contracts, they are influencers poisoning our young men with misogyny packaged as self-help.

“This network of anti-women communities online, full of grifters, abusers and con men, is flooding social media with hate. And, as a State, we are doing almost nothing to stop it.”

Regulating the algorithms and the tech companies platforming the misogyny is a job that will have to be tackled at an EU level, the minister said.

Gary agreed Europe had a role, but pointed out that the tech companies were based in this country. He suggested Ireland could take the lead by applying data protection regulation standards to those companies.

This was one of the few times, in all the years of debates and discussions in the Dáil about violence against women, when the contributions from male speakers rose above the level of sincere condoling, puzzled hand-wringing and making sure to say the right thing.

There was understanding here too.

Granted, it was only two deputies having a discussion during Leaders’ Questions. But it was good to hear.

“Deputy, I appreciate the fact that, as a man, you’ve identified this is predominantly a man’s issue because of the fact that violence against women is perpetrated by men,” Jim said to Gary.

The new sheriff didn’t do too badly at all on his first day in town.

All he has to do now is start producing the results.