Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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A lot of my questions have been touched on. When we read that 51,000 concerns about the abuse and neglect of adults have been reported to the safeguarding and protection social work teams since 2015, I am very uncomfortable that it is unknown how many of these relate to people with disabilities. The IASW has also established that An Garda Síochána cannot provide figures, as we have said, about the rates of abuse and neglect of residents. That is a massive concern. How do we work on this? I welcome legislation and feel we need to do it but I am firm believer in enforcement and common sense. That is something we spoke about earlier. Why is there under-reporting on safeguarding issues? What do the witnesses think could be the barriers to reporting? Communication was brought up as one issue. Are there particular issues with communication skills or whatever? How do we do it? It was said that if there are any issues, people should contact the Garda or go through the HSE. We know ourselves the Garda is crying out for more members. The HSE is under pressure too. I read here that HIQA has a role to examine the safeguarding measures in place to ensure they are as robust as possible. What does robust mean? From the time something is reported, timescale is of the essence. When we talk about "robust", I just think that needs to be looked at.

This is something that was touched on earlier. There is great work being done in the sporting organisations for safeguarding children. Everyone involved in a club has to take a course now so they know about safeguarding children and the reporting mechanisms. Why is that not the case for vulnerable adults? Why is that not happening? Safeguarding our adults, regardless of the situation, is everybody's business. We need to be mindful and listen to people's stories. The witnesses spoke about Covid. Do they think that Covid played a huge role in this? Everyone has the right to be safe and to live a life free from harm. We as policymakers and Government have to make sure everybody feels safe. They have to be free from harm. We need to work on some sort of a different system, and we spoke about common sense a few minutes ago and the issue of a call line out of hours. These are issues that need to be addressed. Money has to be put into areas where we need it most. That is not happening. We need to overcome it. There are significant issues within the system.

I thank the witnesses. I hope this is going to go some way to helping but I do not know, unless we have enforcement, proper regulation and things like that.

I have a concern in that regard.

Reference was made to education. I am a big believer in education and in people knowing that if they report something, it will not come back on them.

I again thank the witnesses. Like the Chair, I apologise that they had to wait such a long time to come back in.