A REPORT ON familicide – cases of murder-suicide in which one person kills multiple close family members – will go to Cabinet today, four years after it was first commissioned.

An independent study was commissioned by the Department of Justice into familicide and domestic homicide reviews in 2019.

This independent research involved consultations with a wide range of stakeholders, including family members of victims, state agencies and non-governmental organisations, with a view to making recommendations to improve the State’s response to familicide and domestic homicide.

The report, which will go to Cabinet today, is expected to be published once it has been shared with families.

The minister recently met with the victims’ families to inform them of his intention to bring the report to Government. 

The late Norah Gibbons was asked to carry out the study on familicide and domestic homicide reviews in 2019, following a campaign by the family of Clodagh Hawe, who was murdered by her husband, Alan, in 2016.

He also murdered the couple’s three children – Liam, aged 13, Niall, aged 11 and Ryan aged 6 – before taking his own life.

Solicitor Maura Butler was tasked the research lead after Gibbons passed away. The process was completed in January 2022 and the report will be published shortly.

Counselling in primary schools

Separately today, the Education Minister Norma Foley will bring a memo to Cabinet on a new pilot project to provide counselling services in primary schools.

In total, €5 million has been allocated to rollout the new pilot programme which will provide counselling in primary schools for the first time.

This new pilot project aims to do so with two new support models for primary schools.

The first part is the provision of counselling to children in primary schools in seven counties across the country.

This will be done in close collaboration with our National Educational Psychology Service who will support schools by establishing panels of qualified counsellors and by helping to identify the students who would most benefit from this intervention.

The second part will create a new type of role within the education system that of a Wellbeing Practitioner who will work with schools on early intervention and wellbeing promotion.

These new practitioners will be provided with comprehensive training by NEPs, it is understood. 

The pilot will inform any further rollout of counselling services across the wider education community, it is believed. 

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will also bring forward his plans to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to those under 18, with legislation expected to be enacted before the summer recess.

Transport links 

Finally, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien will bring forward  recommendations from a working group tasked to consider opportunities for ‘Transport Orientated Development’ (TOD) in major urban centres.

The Dublin TOD study involved a review of lands in four Dublin local authorities that are located close to existing or proposed high-capacity public transport nodes, including DART, MetroLink, Luas and BusConnects.

The working group has identified 14 locations in Dublin that are suitable for the phased delivery of intensive mixed-use development, especially residential, in accordance with the principles of TOD.

These locations include: Adamstown; Ballymun; Barnhill/Kellystown; Cherrywood; Clonburris; North Fringe; Poolbeg West; Sandyford; Tallaght; Broombridge; City Edge; Dunsink; Jamestown and Charlestown; and Lissenhall.