Ms Sinéad McGarry:

I thank all of the members for their questions and interest in this important topic. From the perspective of the association, I must make it clear that, at the moment, we have a piecemeal response to adult safeguarding in a way we do not have but used to have in terms of child safeguarding. While the two issues are not directly comparable, the kind of responses we need from the State are. It is heartening to hear all of the things that have been mentioned today, yet, not to negate the optimism Professor Kelly introduced to the room, these messages have been delivered repeatedly. Some of these speakers have repeated these messages for many years. We are not seeing a response from our systems and legislators in terms of adopting these measures and translating them into practices that would change the lived experience of the people who have been mentioned by the Senator Seery Kearney.

To bring it back to the person in a congregated setting, if somebody today experiences abuse or his or her family is concerned about abuse, if it is a residential setting for children, they can ring Tusla. In the case we are talking about, they can ring HIQA that will do all of the fantastic and important measures Ms Grogan and Mr. Colfer have outlined, but at the moment HIQA does not have the authority to investigate individual complaints. Therefore, the system will be looked at overall and there will be that overarching piece, which is vital, important and has transformed our services. The person may then be advised to ring the Ombudsman, who does not investigate clinical complaints. The person might ring his or her safeguarding and protection social worker, who will, if he or she can, look at some aspects of the concern if it is in a public setting, but that social worker does not have a right of access to somebody who lives in a private service provider. It is very important to note that 80% of older people, of whom a significant number may have a physical or an intellectual disability, live within the nursing homes sector and 80% of those homes are owned by the private sector. In terms of accessibility to the supports that they need and safeguarding supports, I do not know if we would accept a situation in this country where 80% of children lived in a home where they could not access safeguarding social worker expertise. I do not think that would be acceptable at any level. A person could also go to the confidential recipient who manages concerns related to HSE services only.

As I list these, I am sure Deputies and Senators, as committee members, may have some familiarity with the services I am talking about. Again, I ask them to go back to the perspective of the residents and their families having experienced some form of abuse or infringement of their rights and the complexity of the system we expect them to navigate. We have options, knowledge and measures, but what we need from the perspective of social workers is political expediency to put these solutions in place. We are talking about governance structures and having a one-stop-shop, as we have in other parts of the State. Tusla has all of the centralised expertise. It is one central authority that will allow the services to respond to all of the issues we have talked about. When things go wrong, one can operate and put in preventative measures and, as needed, safeguarding social work experts, the guards or whoever can come in.

We are missing the holistic piece. As Ms Grogan alluded to, people with disabilities sometimes need additional supports to report their experiences of abuse. It is exceptionally challenging. We reference those 143 sexual assaults that were reported. These were not necessarily substantiated but these were concerns that came to the attention of HIQA. Specific measures are required to support somebody, not just to disclose it but also report it to the relevant authorities such as the Garda. I believe Professor Phelan referenced the specialist policing units that are available elsewhere. We need the same sort of supports here across the investigative units, whether it is social work or the Garda, to ensure people are given every opportunity to tell their story and to have equal access to justice and protection.

We have outlined measures in our submission. As per usual, it is a reasonably lengthy submission but there are very quick easy wins around governance and easy wins around legislative measures that can be taken in the interim. Ultimately, until our systems and laws value this and reflect what we believe, as a society, should be the response regardless of where a person who experiences abuse lives, we are not going to progress as much as we can. The missing ingredient is political expediency and we would love to see that.