Local victims’ rights advocates say they’re hopeful the scales of justice will eventually tip back in the favour of victims.
It follows a meeting they held with the leader of Sinn Féin in recent days to give feedback on a bill the party’s working on about domestic homicide reviews.
Kilkenny man John Whelan was there from the group SAVE, while the local Amber Women’s Refuge also attended.
Mr Whelan says it was a very productive meeting “Yeah and they just wanted feedback from ourselves, they wanted feedback from families that have been through that situation and from the agencies that deal with families on a day-to-day basis so yes they’re bringing the policies to the Dáil, Fianna Fail are working on something similar and again it’s a step in the right direction I suppose to getting the scales of justice balanced back towards families again”.
Mr Whelan adds that if this bill is passed it would be a big step forward noting it’s “A review of exactly what happened and how it happened, timelines, everything like that will be looked into to see what the danger signs were, was anything missed, so it’s about learning for the future & it’s about making sure that things like that don’t happen again just in light I suppose of the case in Cavan with the Hawe family”.
