Ms Sin?ad Gibney:

I thank the Chair for his questions and comments. It is a little off-topic but I would like to mention my experience in a previous life, when I worked in a corporate sector of social responsibility for a tech company. Our programme was focused on older people and specifically on digital literacy for older people. I consider it a privilege of my life that in my mid-30s I was exposed to understanding ageing and age discrimination more deeply. It engendered a much more positive outlook in me and an appreciation of the way that society simply has just not caught up with the concept of ageing. For example, I remember at the time figures being kicked around that 65 was set as the pension age, when life expectancy was 70. At the time - this was about ten years ago - the first person had been born in the UK who was expected to live to the age of 130, which very much said that half of that person's life was going to be on the State pension. As a society we just do not and have not yet come to appreciate ageing and "positive ageing", as the Chair has described it. It is a very important area.

Within our own organisation, we are placing our attention on this. One of our strategic priorities is around future-proofing. This veers into the Chair's next question about institutional settings. During the pandemic, we were particularly concerned that the voices and experiences of certain groups were very much not considered in both the impact of the pandemic itself but also in the crisis response measures which were introduced. I am speaking here about prisons, nursing homes and so on. We very much want to do all we can to raise questions about how the Government and the State can better respond to sudden crises like the pandemic and longer-running crises like the climate crisis. We must ensure those voices are heard in those responses and are not just thought about later on as part of an inquiry, etc.

Specifically relating to safeguards and so forth, I fully agree with Senator McGahon's interesting comments about the difficulty that people in Northern Ireland must feel, together with the frustration on legislation which is not progressing. It is important to acknowledge that we have a record in this jurisdiction - here in the South - with regard to the delays we have experienced in legislation which provides those safeguards and protections. The Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act and the Disability Act both very much lagged behind in their implementation and in the understanding of the rights-based models for disability which those Acts would put in place.

I cannot make a committee appearance without calling once again for the ratification of the optional protocol on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which will introduce better access to remedies and justice for people who find themselves in those settings, for example, among the broader disabled community.

I would like to mention something of which the Chair may or may not be aware. Legislation which is going through the Houses of the Oireachtas - the inspection of places of detention Bill - will introduce a new mechanism called the national preventive mechanism, NPM, under the United Nations Convention against Torture, UNCAT. IHREC will be designated as the NPM co-ordinator. Each sector will have an NPM. The justice sector will have the Inspector of Prisons with an extended remit to go beyond prisons into all justice-related areas. The likelihood is that HIQA will be in charge of nursing homes and direct provision and the Mental Health Commission is likely to be in charge of institutions relating to mental health. There will be a number of mechanisms and then we will be the co-ordinating body which brings together that work. The UN has said that the introduction of an NPM is one of the biggest factors for safeguarding and protecting the rights of people in institutional settings. During the Covid-19 period, although it was a success story in infection control, we saw a real erosion of the rights of prisoners and their families. Those kinds of things do not happen with NPMs because it is very much a preventive mechanism. It is not just about the one-off inspections we see; it is a much more collaborative effort to work with those organisations, institutions and sectors to ensure that where there is a power imbalance between the State and residents in such settings, their rights are protected and safeguards are appropriate, in place and enforceable. The NPM will make a difference and we await the implementation of that legislation.

We are very interested in Ms Gibney's commentary. My point is that the rape occurred during Covid. Ms Gibney is quite right. Anyone who was in a nursing home across the country could not have visitors because of Covid and the regulations. Obviously, the vast majority of places were extremely well run with very professional staff but it has not always been the case. HIQA failed to find the issue. These people's rights have been abused so how do we vindicate them from a human rights perspective? I am trying to think out loud. I accept all the good things Ms Gibney is talking about. They are all positive but there is a need for a definitive statement about all of this. It may have to be at the end of an inquiry process that has commenced. I am not happy to leave it like that. I am not suggesting Ms Gibney is happy to leave it that way either. How can we say as a society authoritatively, through the human rights organisation, that this is an abuse of human rights? I do not know if this can prompt an answer.