Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms Justice Laffoy and her colleagues. I will try to contain my frustration when I am speaking. It beggars belief that almost 20 years later we are still talking about how we are going to safeguard older people. There are very basic things that need to be done. It is not reinventing the wheel. There are clear principles that are accepted by the western world and by most other countries in Europe regarding what needs to be observed in terms of putting in place proper safeguarding arrangements in legislation. There are models and the witnesses have referenced some of them. For the life of me, I cannot understand why this is taking so long. I wonder why, from the commission's point of view, this is going on for so long. Perhaps it has a lot of other work on hand or it cannot afford to devote the necessary time to do it in an expeditious way. Is it the case that it suits the powers-that-be that this is a long, drawn-out process, that we do not have product and it is taking an inordinately long time to come up with product on this? The only conclusion I can come to is that it suits successive Governments and, indeed, it suits the system and the establishment.

I was struck by comments made by the Irish Association of Social Workers. It talked about that type of culture and mindset in the HSE, for example, and in other agencies, which is more concerned with self-protection or the organisation than with protecting the clients they serve.

I am just posing the question of why it is taking so long and why, at a political level, successive Governments do not seem to have any appetite to legislate in the area. I would welcome the views of the witnesses on this.