Ms Patricia Rickard-Clarke:

There is a lack of understanding of what is really happening at the coalface. Our culture in Irish society is such that decisions are made for older people. Their money is taken from them. No issues are raised and everybody turns a blind eye. We identified that in our 2022 paper. There is a passive acceptance of abuse, if I can put it that way. Every Department and organisation works with a silo mentality. There is no interaction. If we are talking about sharing information to protect somebody, under GDPR, you can certainly share information to protect a person. We have been asking the Data Protection Commission for a guidance document on sharing data since 2018. A regulation is required under the Data Protection Act 2018. We have asked the Minister several times to make such a regulation on the processing of personal data in the public interest.

There are all of those gaps and there is no activity on any of those issues. We are very frustrated. We had the Bill in 2017 and the Oireachtas joint committee report in 2018 saying that adult safeguarding was an urgent matter. We are now in 2025. We did our paper in 2022 because the Law Reform Commission had done an issues paper a couple of years previous and we were very anxious to state what was there. In other jurisdictions, if a law reform commission produces a document and a report, the government has to reply within 12 months. We do not have that mechanism. We were trying to get that when I was in the Law Reform Commission. The commission has done a very good job in setting out very detailed Bills so there is not a lot of work to do. Where there is a will, there is a way. If the decision is made to go ahead, it can be done. Again, organisations and professions work in their own silos. There are turf wars and all of that. We need work across agencies and Departments to solve this issue and to ensure that we are protecting very at-risk adults.