Kathy Sheridan: Forget the egregious pinkwashing of International Women’s Day – this is what women need
What would a meaningful International Women’s Day look like?
City authorities leading decision-makers and commentators on mandatory tours through the mean, dismal fabric of our maternity hospitals? Media outlets agreeing to ringfence front page space for reports from the family law courts? Guided tours from violently abused women who have navigated those corridors, courtrooms and charged crowds in high tension cases?
It’s an odd coincidence that in 2026, places such as maternity hospitals and the family law courts, where women are most likely to need physical privacy and comfort, are the least likely to provide them. If the conditions in which exhausted women experience the bloody agonising labour of childbirth are secondary to concerns about preserving dilapidated streetscapes, we should probably take a hard look at our priorities.
If the physical fabric of the family law courts fails to offer the sense of safety and separation essential to abuse victims, what contradictory message is being sent to those who are simultaneously being implored to come forward?
The planned family law courts complex in Hammond Lane, which has been talked about since 2013, has still to see a sod turned and like the M50, will already be too small for purpose by the time it is finished, says leading family law solicitor Keith Walsh. But while the state of the courthouses is unacceptable, at least Dublin has well-run specialist family law courts, he points out, unlike their country counterparts – where a court day often sees a building crammed with terrified women encountering their abusers in common areas, while bumping up against local criminals and neighbours. The famously strict in-camera rule designed to protect identities under family law becomes rather theoretical in those scenarios.
And that’s just the buildings.
A new campaign for changes in the family law system itself by barrister Lisa Ann Wilkinson and Síle Ní Dhubhghaill prioritises reform of the in-camera rule among other concerns, but for other reasons. The current law silences the women at the heart of such cases, they say. Their timing underscores the fact that nine months since the publication of a report on the subject by University College Cork (UCC) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) for the Department of Justice, officials are still examining proposals.
The use of the in-camera rule in all family law cases is unique to Ireland, says Walsh – and while backed by the sound principle of protecting children’s identities and respecting family life, it directly opposes the core principle of the Irish legal system that justice, “save in such special and limited cases as may be prescribed by law, shall be administered in public”.
[ When family law becomes ‘lawfare’: One woman’s costly journey through the courtsOpens in new window ]
The upshot is that the public knows next to nothing about how cases are handled behind those closed doors, in those deeply consequential cases.
Would they care more if they knew more? Would the contemptuous references to Helen McEntee while minister for justice as “minister for woke” have been so casually uttered if people had an inkling of what lies beneath the family law courts?
The sky did not fall in when the UK family law courts began in January 2025 to allow journalists and legal bloggers to attend any family court and report on what they observed. Significantly, UK reporters are now also permitted to seek access to documentation and speak to, and quote, parties involved in the proceedings, all while the system continues to protect identities and square it with respect for family life.
The value of this became evident when a little girl called Sara Sharif was murdered by her father and stepmother in 2023. Journalists still working under the old in-camera rule were aware of court cases where three judges in separate proceedings over seven years had placed Sara in the care of foster parents, then her mother and finally her father, all following assessments by professionals. But the journalists still had to apply to the high court in London for permission to report on “historic” court cases relating to Sara – despite those courts’ and assessors’ hugely significant role in the lead-up to her murder. They also had to appeal a ruling that gave the judges anonymity.
This is the kind of case that agitates Irish campaigners. The current rule is that parties must not discuss proceedings with parties not involved in the proceedings. In other words, applicants may – carefully – speak out about the incidents that led to a family law court, but the rule forbids them to speak out about what happened in court and where that led. And those proceedings by definition are less open to scrutiny than other courts. Frustrated applicants have no resort but a higher court, which very few can afford.
This is what campaigners call the “silencing” effect. Among its 21 recommendations, the UCC/TCD report proposes that the in-camera system does not impede parties trying to access support outside court, a proposal which of itself makes the campaigners’ case.
[ Inside the family court: ‘I don’t know what to do with him as it is complete chaos’Opens in new window ]
After two years under the UK’s reformed rules, the contented president of the family division, Andrew McFarlane, said the media reporting had been “significant” and included coverage of issues affecting some of the most vulnerable people in society – such as children subject to Deprivation of Liberty Orders, the need to limit parental rights for convicted paedophiles, and cases of child neglect or abandonment. There have been no known breaches of anonymity of children. The aims of the pilot, to increase public understanding and awareness of the family court, were being realised.
Any man or woman looking for a meaningful International Women’s Day beyond the egregious pinkwashing need look no further.
