Ms Sinéad Gibney:

It is an issue that we are keen to look at. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we feel there could have been legislation in place which would have assisted in identifying earlier in the process potential issues in places such as nursing homes.

There has been a disproportionate impact on people in nursing homes, and that is something that we must continue to analyse. We have initiated a report which we will be publishing in the coming months, and this is one of the topics being dealt with in that report.

The national preventative mechanism that I mentioned, for example, would apply not just to places of detention but also to nursing homes where people have been admitted in particular ways. We would like to stress that the pandemic has meant that existing human rights and equality issues have been exposed and this has been exacerbated for certain groups. Where there is capacity, people need to be able to use that capacity to assert their rights. Where that capacity needs to be fulfilled, we need to provide ways in which that can be done, and of course that impacts on nursing homes. The OPCAT mechanism of the national preventative mechanism would potentially allow for that to be used in those settings. This is a live issue for the commission.