How Men and Boys Are Faring in Ireland Today
Men and boys are disadvantaged across a whole range of social indicators. Outcomes in the family courts tend to favour women. If there is a breakdown in a relationship, the court will usually remove the man from the family home leaving the woman there with the children. He will then have to rent accommodation which may be a distance from the family home causing him difficulty in maintaining any meaningful relationship with his children. Some women may actively seek to prevent the man getting regular access, and court orders are often breached by women without penalty, since judges feel they have few sanctions to apply. None will ever sentence a woman to jail even for persistent breaches of court orders. As well as being grossly unjust, this demonstrates a complete lack of concern for fatherhood and the positive role it can play in children’s lives. Shared parenting is a concept that is gaining ground in many countries and obviously does not accord with removing the father from the home in case of relationship breakdown. A stark summary of the position was given by psychotherapist Trish Murphy writing in her Tell Me About It column in the Irish Times last year. In a piece headed How does a father in Ireland have a relationship with his children when the mother prevents it? She wrote: ”Everyone I have spoken to over the last four years, all the guards, therapists, doctors, clinical psychologists, lawyers, fathers, even the mothers, openly admit that the Irish legal system is unfair against fathers”.
There is a vast amount of evidence that men and women perpetrate Domestic Violence (DV) at similar rates, yet the official narrative is that it is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men. The state is firmly in favour of this view: male support services are in a pitiful state with just one organisation, Men’s Aid, to cover the whole country, with one permanent centre in Navan and with no call centre in the whole Dublin region. Denied funding for a 24/7 call service in 2021, operating on a 9 to 5 basis Monday to Friday and very limited hours on the weekend, with no shelters for men, Men’s Aid gets perhaps 1% of the total state funding for DV services. Compare this with 38 local support centres for women including more than twenty shelters, with a budget of tens of millions of euros and hundreds of support staff.
“Every interest group in the state has at least one, in some cases several, state-funded national representative bodies, but not men. The importance of having a body to represent men cannot be overstated”
The media is complicit here: the treatment of domestic violence during the Covid lockdown by the public service broadcaster RTÉ is a classic example. Following an outcry by feminist groups claiming there was a huge increase in DV during the lockdown, RTÉ invited feminist groups on current affairs programmes many times, but never once invited Men’s Aid to appear. Complaints about this by Men’s Voices got nowhere partly because the Broadcasting Act itself is flawed.
Boys have been underperforming in education for many years but there is no attention paid to this. At primary level male teachers account for 15% of the total staff, while at second level the number has fallen precipitously to 32%, down from 40% in 2003; one consequence is that boys lack role models. Yet none of this has drawn a whisper of comment from the teacher unions, the media or the politicians.
Another issue is false allegations. These often take place in the context of a bitter breakdown in relationships where custody of children is a factor and allegations of DV or child abuse are made. Unjust laws are an overlapping issue; a good example is the Istanbul Convention, which has been criticized for stereotyping men as perpetrators and women as victims There was no debate whatsoever on the Istanbul Convention either in the media or in the Oireachtas (Parliament) before it was enacted in 2019, a standout example of the failure of both politicians and media which happens all too often for a swathe of issues today. The current Third National Strategy on Domestic Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (DSGBV) is anchored in the Convention. This strategy was prepared and drafted by a three-person executive group drawn from two feminist organisations and the Department of Justice and so was entirely predictable.
But there is a fundamental factor which underlies all of these specific issues: there is no counterpart for men of the National Women’s Council(NWC). Every interest group in the state has at least one, in some cases several, state-funded national representative bodies, but not men. The importance of having a body to represent men cannot be overstated: it is essential when bills come up for pre-legislative scrutiny and hearings before Oireachtas committees take place; it has standing with the media and when making approaches to politicians; it can be a voice in debates and discussions of all kinds. The consequences of such an imbalance are all too clear: issues facing men are treated as if they don’t exist. A further instance of this disparity is currently the subject of “consultation” for its next phase: the creation of a National Strategy for Women and Girls. This overt favouritism has been ongoing for decades, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that men and boys are treated as second class citizens.
Men’s Voices made an attempt in 2023 to set up a cross-party group in the Irish Parliament which would focus on the concerns affecting men and boys. Initially we had good hopes when we met the Ceann Comhairle, the Speaker of the Dáil (House of Representatives), where we were well received. We felt that it would be important to secure a member of the House, a member that we could have confidence in, to chair the initial meeting with other House members at which the case would be presented and to enable the initiative to get off the ground. It was at this point the process stalled and eventually ran into the ground.
“[…] any assessment of the position of men today must take account of two major factors: (i) The attitude of the media towards men and boys; (ii) The attitude of the political parties and politicians in general”
From the information you have read so far in this article you will be able to see that any assessment of the position of men today must take account of two major factors:
(i) The attitude of the media towards men and boys;
(ii) The attitude of the political parties and politicians in general.
In the case of the media they are either serenely indifferent or, more likely, actively hostile. Men’s Voices has never once been invited on RTÉ on serious issues such as health and wellbeing, despite numerous requests to the main current affairs programmes over a nine year period. The same is true for the national dailies; never once have we been invited to write an op-ed on any of the numerous concerns of men and boys. On the other hand, women’s groups and feminists have ready access to the media, are accorded favoured treatment and rarely subjected to critical questioning.
The tendency of the parties to take the currently fashionable “progressive” position on matters of ideology is notable, and they constantly defer to feminist organisations. All are careful not to step outside a carefully delimited zone. This has been demonstrated in the debates on the Hate Speech bill where the six largest parties all supported the bill, and again in the referendums last March where all supported the proposals to redefine the notion of family and insert a care provision in the Constitution in place of Article 41.2 (wrongly castigated as the “woman in the home referendum”). These were defeated in the most resounding fashion, proving just how out of touch the parties are with public opinion.
Individual politicians take their cue in accordance with the Official Narrative. Only a few independents dare to speak out, but even then not on men’s issues. The traditional centrist or centre right parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are now enthusiastically “progressive” in the standard EU sense, and implement EU Directives without question.
The media and politicians are seen to be similar in that they exist in bubbles. The supreme value is to march in lockstep, never deviate from the party line, and combine in a symbiotic relationship. More than a year ago, RTÉ found itself in deep trouble over bad governance and lack of financial controls. But that crisis has passed, despite the fact that perhaps 15% of the public have refused to pay the licence, as the Government has promised to make good any lack of funding.
One bright note in an otherwise dismal scene has been the emergence of the global alliance DAVIA in 2021. This now boasts more than 150 member groups, helps coordinate numerous campaigns and provides a data bank for members to access, greatly enhancing efficiency.
In summary little has improved for men in Ireland in the last decade. With an election said to be imminent, a new government is unlikely to bring any change except that if the next election produces a hung Dáil (where no single party has a majority), then, given sufficient fragmentation of the vote, there is a possibility real change could take place.
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Disclaimer: This article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy, legal advice, or other professional opinion. Never disregard such advice because of this article or anything else you have read from the Centre for Male Psychology. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of, or are endorsed by, The Centre for Male Psychology, and we cannot be held responsible for these views. Read our full disclaimer here.
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