Ms Patricia Rickard-Clarke:

The three Departments referred to by the Chairman are critical. There probably should be others such as the Department of Finance.

I see the authority replacing the current national safeguarding committee, which has a multi-agency format with State, private, non-governmental organisations, etc, involved. It has a wide representation of high levels from those organisations such as chief executive officers. It is important to have people around the table who can make decisions and commit. It will need a core number of staff but will also need to be able to commission work because one does not know from day to day what expertise one needs. It should also have powers of investigation like the decision support service.

The cost to the State would actually decrease substantially. Taking Mr. Taylor's point, we are wasting and using money inappropriately because we are going around in circles and not actually dealing with the problem. We have no systems in place or no processes in place to deal with it.

Therefore, I would say that it would actually decrease the cost to the State if we had a proper system.

On having mandatory or voluntary reporting, that needs huge concentration in terms of what is appropriate. Looking at other jurisdictions, mandatory reporting does not work. My view is to have good prevention and a system internally in organisations such as that being put in place by the HSE and external panels to deal with a lot of complaints. At the moment, we do not really distinguish between a low level complaint and a really serious safeguarding issue but we need to dissect those. Where there are serious issues, it would then be over to the independent authority to take action and investigate. Our systems, NGOs, banks and financial institutions are all institutions today.

On the public awareness in families, a huge cultural shift has to take place in terms of understanding the appropriate behaviour to a family member and acknowledging that the vulnerable family member or a person who lacks capacity is an individual person with his or her own rights. We have not reached that point yet because our legislation has not demanded it of us. This is why I emphasise that the Assisted Decision-making capacity Act is so important. It is based on the right of the individual. We should not look at their disability, age or whatever but look at them as an individual person with rights and we should enable them to exercise their rights. That is hugely important. On whether it would dramatically increase the number of complaints, I would say "yes and no". Perhaps it would initially, but if we put a robust prevention and proper system in place, we would get the benefit of it.

Those are my views, off the top of my head. I congratulate Senator Kelleher, who was on our National Safeguarding Committee. The Bill is hugely important and relevant. She has worked on it but I know she has said, including in her speech in the Seanad, that it needs further development. Of course it does. These are not easy issues. They are complex. The future of vulnerable people in society needs to be protected so we need to ensure that we have legislation that stands up and responds to that.