Ms Fiona Larthwell:

Yes, I was just going to come in on the safeguarding policy. As the Deputy knows, we are at an advanced stage of development with the safeguarding policy. We have secured some funding next year for the roll-out of that policy. We expect to go to public consultation very shortly on it. We are at the last stages of kind of editorial clean-up, I would say, of the policy. We are hoping to make that ready for internal review within the Department before the end of the year.

HIQA is involved in that. We have a steering group for the policy, which is a cross-departmental steering group with important input from across the sector. HIQA has been very involved in that, as has the HSE. We have regard to standards that HIQA and the Mental Health Commission developed as well. It is important to us that we align with these and all of the changes that are being made through the Patient Safety (Notifiable Patient Safety Incidents) Bill as well to ensure we are not replicating them. The intention is, through that safeguarding policy, that for adults at risk of abuse, we will see risk assessments and ability to review incidents as well. The HSE obviously has a policy around that already for incidents that happen within the HSE.