Ms Patricia Rickard-Clarke:

Safeguarding Ireland as an organisation is a voluntary board. We do not have any function in relation to safeguarding adults. Moreover, we are not part of the HSE but are an independent body. Since our establishment, we been arguing for the detail the Senator is looking for and posing questions on all of that. In terms of the current legislation and protecting people, the other issue is that HIQA regulates designated centres and nursing homes but has no current remit in terms of dealing with individual issues. That is a big gap which we hope it will fill shortly. Also there is no regulation of home care services, for example, if it is happening in the community. It is an absolute disgrace that while there is legislation there and while there is an obligation and it is an offence if you do not report, there has been no reporting with many of these issues. It comes down again to education and training and the fact that we as a country and a culture have not had the debate around adult safeguarding. We have only begun to do so in the last few years but when trying to convince people this is really critical and that safeguarding is everybody's business, lots of people and organisations do not see that. We need clear adult safeguarding legislation, a critical review of cases where things happen by an independent authority. The HSE should not be investigating things within its own service. It is really important that we have such an independent authority, that they investigate complaints and that people know that is the authority to which they have an obligation, under various sectors or whatever, to report.