Mr. Justin Moran:

Specific references to elder abuse are reported to the Health Service Executive and monitored. Last year, 2,600 cases were reported. The most common form of abuse was psychological, the next was financial while physical made up about 300 to 400 of those cases. That 2,600 is the highest number that has ever been reported since elder abuse reporting began in 2007. Our own experience from speaking to people who contact us and raise issues of elder abuse with our information service is an enormous reluctance on the part of people to bring forward these cases. In many situations, if it is a family member, as the majority of elder abuse cases are, they simply do not want to get a family member in trouble. They do not want to get the Garda or the HSE involved in family situations. In institutional settings, it can be a concern over the repercussions of raising those issues. The problem with elder abuse is the lack of reporting of it. The fact is that many older people do not categorise necessarily what is happening to them as elder abuse in the first place. That is why we are trying to encourage people, and we encourage our members and anybody who contacts us, to refer these cases and these situations to the HSE who have case workers dedicated to working on the issue of elder abuse.