Mr. Justin Moran:

I thank the committee on behalf of Age Action Ireland for the invitation to appear today. I would like to briefly introduce my colleagues, Ms. Bridget Sleap from HelpAge International, to which we are affiliated and which has worked to advance the human rights of older people for many years, and Ms. Lianne Murphy, our ageing and development officer.

We are here today because we believe that the rights of older persons are not effectively protected by our current human rights infrastructure and that a new international convention on the rights of older people would go some considerable way towards fixing this. Although many international human rights instruments are universal by nature, older people are rarely specifically mentioned in the instruments themselves or in the recommendations made by the committees established to monitor compliance with them. International human rights law has little to say on issues that are particular to older people, such as elder abuse or support in long-term care. Similar gaps in how human rights law applied to child protection and adoption, for example, highlighted the need for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. A new convention for older people would articulate what human rights law has to say about the issues of concern to them and, if ratified by Ireland, would be directly applicable here.

There are many practical instances in which the rights of older people are not effectively protected here in Ireland. One area of particular concern to Age Action Ireland is the issue of elder abuse, which is a violation of an older person’s right to be free from violence and not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The 2002 report of the working group on elder abuse describes it as "a single or repeated act or lack of appropriate action occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust which causes harm or distress to an older person or violates their human and civil rights". Institutional elder abuse takes the form of not meeting the appropriate care needs of older people within institutional settings. I am sure committee members are familiar with HIQA reports on nursing homes in Ireland which would fit that bill.

An individual example of this is the recent case highlighted in the media of Mr. Gerry Feeney, an 87-year-old man suffering from Parkinson's disease who spent some time in Beaumont Hospital before-----