Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)

You are welcome. We need comprehensive safeguarding legislation and we need to allow State bodies to conduct unannounced inspections, obtain court orders to enter and remove individuals where necessary, receive and act on reports of abuse and advocate for the rights of adults at risk, among a range of measures. We need mandatory reporting, much like we have with the child safeguarding legislation.

The State is running at almost €600 million in terms of these tribunals. What we get for our €600 million is that lessons have been learned. If we learned lessons, we would not need these commissions. The Farrelly commission has not really given us answers. Neither it nor the Grace report has given us a sense of accountability or justice.

I will finish with a statement from the CEO of Inclusion Ireland:

Whilst improvements in safeguarding have been noted in recent years it remains a concern that many disabled people still live in circumstances where abuse is more likely to occur. Until we change the nature of how we support people to be truly focused on their human rights, choices and freedoms, we run the risk of more stories like Grace’s.

This statement should drive our actions now. None of us wants to be speaking about future cases like this so we need to act together with urgency and legislate. Going back to Senator Clonan's point, we can expedite adult safeguarding legislation. That is in our power as legislators and I would welcome that.