Ireland could become the safest country in the world for women and children.
Social change agency 'Safe Ireland' is examining Ireland's ground-breaking new Domestic Violence Act which recognises "coercive control" for the first time.
Senator Ivana Bacik is speaking at a Safe Ireland seminar in Dublin today and she says it represents a coming of age of Ireland's understanding of domestic violence.
She said: "Among the new measures introduced by the act is this new sense of coercive control which we had been discussing for some time in the context of domestic violence, but which is really quite a new approach to prosecuting violent behaviour.
"The offence of coercive control relates to behaviour that is controlling or coercive, and has a serious effect on an individual, on a victim."
