Artist Aisling Creegan grew up in a house with parents who had profound alcohol problems.
When her mother consumed alcohol, she became violent. This impacted Ms Creegan's life greatly as a child.
One night, Ms Creegan witnessed her mother throw a marble ashtray at her father's head. Blood sprayed across the walls.
Ms Creegan who was around ten at the time, said it was like watching a movie in slow motion.
The next morning, before she went to school, she was forced by her mother to clean the blood off the wall.
Before she began to do that, her mother pressed and dragged her face along the bloodied wall.
"I go into school anyway, but obviously, I was late because I was cleaning the blood off the walls. My teacher just looked up at me as if to say, ah, here you are again, late".
Ms Creegan spent her school years exhausted and withdrawn due to the turmoil at home, however, nobody was aware of what she was going through.
At one stage, there was the question of her being institutionalised because she was viewed as a poor student.
Again, what she displayed in the classroom was down to the situation at home. She was exhausted.
Now in her 50s, Ms Creegan has made efforts to heal by writing a book about her experience called 'I Am Someone' and through her art.
While she has forgiven her mother, PTSD remains.
Ms Creegan believes that formal processes like Operation Encompass should have been in place to help her as a child and that it should be in existence for children today.
Operation Encompass enables police forces to share information with schools about instances of domestic abuse involving a child.
It allows schools to offer immediate support to the child the following day and has proved highly successful in the UK and Northern Ireland.
"If I had Operation Encompass, I could have gone into school the next morning, which was my sanctuary even though I hated it, and do you know what, I would have told them," she said.
Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI) has been calling for its introduction in Ireland for five years and has expressed concern that Operation Encompass has not been legislated for, despite its inclusion in the Government's 2022 Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence (DSGBV) strategy.
The independent organisation seeking to reduce alcohol harm has said that there were indications from autumn 2023 that the scheme would be implemented.
However, in response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin's Louise O'Reilly last month, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said "work is ongoing" to scope out and develop an operational framework to introduce the scheme in the Irish system.
Minister O'Callaghan pointed to Tusla as the body notified of every domestic abuse-related incident affecting or involving children, which he said was not the case in other jurisdictions.
"Due to this different institutional landscape, it is important that all aspects are fully considered prior to the introduction of a programme such as Operation Encompass," he said.
AAI has expressed concern that the scheme has been long-fingered by the Irish Government despite a rise in domestic violence incidents reported to gardaí in recent years.
In May 2023, Operation Encompass was officially rolled out across all 1,162 schools in Northern Ireland, with more than 23,000 referrals made in the first 12 months.
AAI has highlighted the role alcohol plays in DSGBV in its latest publication, 'Alcohol and domestic, sexual and gender-based violence’.
While it has acknowledged that alcohol can never be used as an excuse for DSGBV, it points out that the role of alcohol is one of "a facilitative nature", which is a contributing cause that accelerates and exacerbates DSGBV.
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Concern about role of alcohol in households
Yesterday, Judge Geoffrey Shannon expressed concern about the role of alcohol in households when he spoke at the launch of the Ombudsman for Children’s Office review of child deaths in Ireland.
He said the failure on the part of society to comprehensively address alcohol and the issue of alcohol had left the child protection system "particularly vulnerable".
Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Cork University Hospital Dr Eoin Fogarty also offers his experience of attending victims of domestic abuse in today's AAI publication.
"A key factor frequently present is alcohol, resulting in severe physical and psychological trauma to parties, including children," he stated.
AAI CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany has described Operation Encompass as a humane trauma-informed response to a child in distress.
"There is no doubt many teachers would do this anyway if they knew what was going on in a child’s home, but the fact is that very often, they don’t due to the hidden nature of domestic abuse," she said.
Ms Gilheany added that while there are different systems and legal mechanisms north of the border, the issues that children face are the same.
"In its first year in operation in Northern Ireland, there were more than 23,000 referrals to Operation Encompass which would translate to around 65,000 referrals in Ireland.
"Why the government hasn’t yet legislated for such a common-sense approach to support these hidden victims of domestic abuse is puzzling," she said.
As a child, Ms Creegan found solace in painting.
She was fascinated by nature, horizons, sun rises, and sun sets and that continues for her today.
"Because no matter how bad the day was, the sun was going to rise and it will set," she said.
