
Our Background

Adult safeguarding issues in Ireland

Patricia Rickard Clarke,
Independent Chairperson
Safeguarding Ireland has now been established (through a company limited by guarantee – National Safeguarding Ireland), with the support of its main funder the HSE, to provide a strong governance base and oversight structure for all future inter-sectoral work relating to safeguarding of vulnerable adults spending the envisaged introduction of adult safeguarding legislation by 2025. It also has responsibility for developing a new Strategic Plan to build on the Strategic Plan first developed through the loosely based National Safeguarding Committee (2015-2019).
Safeguarding Ireland Board Members
- Ms. Patricia Rickard-Clarke – Chair
- Mr. David Byrne – Former Attorney General and former European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection
- Mr. Colm Nolan – Society of Financial Planners Ireland
- Ms. Annmarie O’Connor – Former Business Manager, Money and Budgeting Service (MABS)
- Ms. Louise O’Mahony – Head of Sustainable Banking, Banking & Payments Federation Ireland
(BPFI) - Ms. Nora Owen – Former Minister for Justice
- Professor Amanda Phelan – Professor in Trinity College Dublin
- Mr. Phelim Quinn – CEO Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA)
- Mr. Mervyn Taylor – Former Executive Director of SAGE Advocacy
Attendees:
- General Manager of HSE National Safeguarding Office
- HSE Principal Social Worker representing Safeguarding and Protection Teams
- Safeguarding Ireland, Programme Manager
- Cavanagh Communications (Public Awareness)
In a Red C Poll commissioned by Safeguarding Ireland, half of the respondents reported that a vulnerable adult close to them had experienced abuse. This should not be acceptable in any society and certainly not in a developed democracy such as Ireland.
Further Aims
Objects, incidental and ancillary to the attainment of the Main Objective, are to do the following for the benefit of adults in the Republic of Ireland who may be vulnerable:
(a) To raise public understanding of attitudes, behaviours, circumstances and systems that create vulnerability that may result in abuse and that may require a safeguarding response.
(b) To promote the protection and rights of people who may be vulnerable by encouraging organisations and services to recognise, prevent and deal with exploitation and abuse effectively.
(c) To inform and influence Government policy and legislation to safeguard the rights of people who may be vulnerable.
Memorandum of
Association
Organisations represented on the
National Safeguarding Advisory Committee
- Active Retirement Ireland
- Age Action
- Age Friendly Ireland
- An Garda Síochána
- An Post
- Cavanagh Communications
- Church of Ireland
- Decisions Support Service
- Department of Social Protection
- Disability Federation of Ireland
- Disability Rights Network
- Faculy of Old Age Psychiatrists
- Health Information and Quality Authority
- Health Service Executive
- Inclusion Ireland
- Irish Association of Social Workers
- Irish Banking Culture Board
- Irish College of Medical Practitioners
- Irish Congress of Trade Unions
- Irish Farmers Association
- Irish Hospice Foundation
- Irish League of Credit Unions
- Irish Rural Link
- Law Society of Ireland
- Mental Health Commission
- Money Advice and Budgeting Service
- National Advocacy Service
- National Disability Services Association
- National Federation of Voluntary Service Providers
- National Independent Review Panel
- Safeguarding Ireland Board Members
- Safe Ireland
- SAGE Advocacy
- Society of St. Vincent de Paul