Riot police stand next to a burning police vehicle during a demonstration in Dublin Nov. 23, 2023, following a stabbing attack outside a Catholic school that left three children and a teacher injured. The stabbing happened outside an Irish language-speaking school called Cólaiste Mhuire, which means St. Mary's College. It falls within the parish boundaries of St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, and Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin expressed shock at the stabbing attack. (OSV News photo/Clodagh Kilcoyne, Reuters) “Everyone should care about the freedom and safety of women and girls in Ireland,” said barrister and The Countess founder Laoise de Brun at a recent press conference regarding the Women’s Coalition on Immigration, which launched in late 2025.
The press conference, which outlined the coalition’s demand for the Government to “release disaggregated crime statistics by country of origin and ethnicity” featured speeches from Ms de Brún, Offaly Independent TD Carol Nolan and grassroots campaigner Tanja Alt, among others, on the issues of child safeguarding, sexual violence, and immigration.
Deputy Nolan began the press conference, stating that the coalition hopes to “challenge the conscience of the Government”.
“I will certainly never allow concerns around the safety of our young girls and women to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency or political cowardice,” she said, underlining the coalition’s stance that the Government has not sufficiently addressed their concerns around the potential threat of non-national men to women and children in Ireland.
The coalition’s demand for more detailed statistics come out of a thematic report previously published by the coalition, titled Through a safeguarding lens, darkly: Thematic report on International Protection provision in Ireland which draws from data from EU member states such as Germany, Italy, and Denmark. Based on the report, the data indicates that “foreign-born individuals or those with migrant backgrounds are overrepresented in sexual offending statistics.”
Speaker Una McGurk SC highlighted that country of origin and ethnicity are not recorded in the PULSE framework: the system An Garda Síochána uses to record crime statistics and data.
Laoise de Brún, responding to a question from The Irish Times about the coalition’s political affiliation, emphasised that the coalition aims to be cross-party. “I don’t see this as a left/right issue, I don’t think that the safety and freedom of women, women’s rights, child protection and child safeguarding are left/right issues, and it shouldn’t be seen that way,” she said. “It’s not very helpful to make it a divisive political issue.”