Ms Patricia Rickard-Clarke:

I refer to Deputy O'Reilly's question regarding abuse in home care and residential care. The 2016 HSE figures are the first time that we have had figures from the disability sector and we do not have comprehensive data. Generally, the work the National Centre for the Protection of Older People has done over a number of years indicates a very high level of abuse in the home, that is, the family or community setting. That was for older people. The emphasis there was on a high level of financial abuse. Coming back to the legislation, we require legislation for the right to access a home where there is a high or reasonable suspicion of a person being abused, as well as access to information, data, bank accounts and so on. We have no legislation to deal with that. There is no right of access for the HSE protection teams to go into nursing homes or a person's home in those situations.

In terms of residential care, looking at the HSE figures - again we do not have really comprehensive data - there are instances of a lot of physical abuse where people with intellectual disabilities are living together. That is a question of putting systems, processes, education and training in place.

The right to have an advocate was mentioned. I will leave it to Sage to answer this in detail but again, there are very confrontational situations in which families do not like somebody advocating on behalf of the individual. We absolutely need legislation. One of the huge issues for older people is the right to decide where they wish to reside. As deprivation of liberty legislation will be introduced shortly, it is fundamental that we have the right of advocacy. There should be triggers in certain circumstances where an advocate should be appointed.

HIQA and its powers were mentioned. Its role is to look at systems, organisations and governance but it has no role with regard to individuals and that is a huge deficit in respect of adult safeguarding. As for people with disabilities, when they turn 18 there is no screening of their needs. Someone with intellectual disabilities could live in a situation for many years without an assessment of need. Their changes between the ages of 20 and 40 may never be screened or reviewed. There is no obligation on State agencies or authorities to ascertain if they are in vulnerable situations.

Deputy Durkan spoke about institutions having people in place. We do not have proper systems in place to prevent all of the abuse that happens. If we had proper systems in place we would avoid much of that but we do require the legislation. He also asked about the magnitude of the problem and how far we can go without creating a nanny state. We have total informality at present. There are no systems in place either in State organisations or any other organisations. In other words, what are the standards? We have no regulation of home care. That is a huge gap. The Law Reform Commission recommended that in 2011. We still do not have it. We need a legislative framework to deal with many of these issues.

Financial abuse in financial institutions was mentioned. Again we have had no exchange of information. The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is paying out €7.2 billion in State pensions.

If we take a level of expected abuse of even 10%, it is a large amount of money.

A total of 52% of payments are paid into a bank account where somebody may have the pass card, PIN or whatever. Where money is going into a joint account the banks have no information that the person may lack capacity or cannot operate his or her own bank account. This is why we are talking about inter-agency information and exchange of information. Financial institutions are working quite independently of everything else because we do not have legislation to enable them to make inquiries. How do they raise the red flag or know when the red flag is to be raised? Something the national safeguarding committee has done is try to bring people around the table, and we are working with financial institutions to try to achieve this, but we need the legislation for it.

I will now deal with Deputy Murphy O'Mahony's question on elderly people being least likely to report abuse. The national safeguarding committee had a public awareness campaign earlier this year. We will have another session next week or the week after to try to inform people of what actually is abuse. One of the issues that came out of the Red C poll is that people do not recognise that pilfering the pension or taking the person's money is actually abuse and theft. Sitting around the table, it is difficult to get the State organisations to understand that theft is a crime and it should be reported. We have this informality, and we really need systems in place.

I mentioned the figure paid by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Another €3 billion is paid in occupational pensions from the State with regard to public services. There are huge gaps in their systems as to how they know where a person is in a vulnerable position or has a lack of capacity. The question was asked about putting in people so we do not have the abuse. We have to do a huge amount to put systems and processes in place to prevent it happening in the first place, and not to throw money at inquiries after it happens and the horse has bolted. We have a huge gap because of very many years of doing nothing with heads in the sand ignoring what we need to face into. We badly need a legislative framework to look at all of these areas.