Dr. Martin McMahon:

Safeguarding is not something we particularly focused on in our study. I want to pick up on the point about the Senator's brother and his issue with cataracts not being picked up. The progress made in Ireland on providing care for people with an intellectual disability is to be welcomed. They are now living longer. The drive in policy towards community living has created a vacuum with the provision and delivery of care in a quagmire. The issues with the Senator's brother may have to do with him not being linked into or accessing services. We are very much in favour of a social-care model but if people with an intellectual disability are then competing with the general population to access health services, they are never going to win, unless they have the support to do so.

Professor McCarron mentioned the role of the intellectual disability nurse. Traditionally, Ireland and the UK are the only jurisdictions that have registered nurses in intellectual disability. Their role is to look at health surveillance. Everything Professor McCarron spoke about in her opening statement is theoretically preventable. However, we are witnessing the outcomes of what is happening. We need to be able to intervene earlier. As Professor McCarron said, there is one thing we could do very easily and that is to ensure that community intellectual disability nurses are providing care to the person with an intellectual disability. I am not saying that everybody has to have an intellectual disability nurse but if we had a system where their health needs were under ongoing surveillance, I have no doubt that the Senator's brother's cataracts would have been picked up on earlier.