'Voiceless' 23 Irish women killed by men in month of April remembered by Oireachtas Committee

23 women who died in the month of April over the last 25 years as a result of male violence were remembered at the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality regarding Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence today.

Fine Gael TD and Equality spokeswoman Jennifer Carroll MacNeill read out a list of names of women who were killed from the mid-1990s onward.

Among them were 39-year-old Sligo woman Noeleen Cawley who was stabbed to death by her husband, Bernie Sherry (44) who was fatally shot twice by her ex-partner in Co. Laois in 1997, Irene White (43) who was stabbed in home in Co. Louth, 23-year-old Clare woman Emer O’Loughlin who was stabbed by her neighbour, and 48-year-old Joan McCarthy who was strangled in her home.

She also included Wexford mothers Ciara Dunne (24) from Monageer and Lorraine Flood (38) from Clonroche, who were both killed, along with their children, by their husbands.

Ms Dunne was strangled in her home in April 2007 by her husband, Adrian Dunne (29). Mr Dunne suffocated their children Leanne (5) and Shania (3) before hanging himself.

Ms Flood, a former Rose of Tralee contestant, was fatally shot in the torso by her husband Diarmuid Flood, who then killed their children Mark (6) and Julie (5) before taking his own life.

Ms Carroll MacNeill said that she read out the women’s names “to keep the awareness of why we’re doing this work right at the forefront of our mind.”

“Unless we acknowledge each of those women, they were voiceless in death and they remain voiceless unless we acknowledge them here," she added.

The Oireachtas Committee, chaired by Labour leader Ivana Bacik, was established to address the recommendations made in a report on gender equality published by the Citizens Assembly in June 2021.