Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit. We did agree with waiving pre-legislative scrutiny on the basis that the capacity is not within the system at this point in time to ensure that all those wards of court are exited. We had some unease in relation to doing this. In fairness, the Department and those representing the courts were able to give us a briefing. I will very quickly go through, let us say, some of my worries in relation to this. As I stated, we did not want to create a set of circumstances where people found themselves in legal limbo. However, representatives from St. John of God intellectual disability services approached me, and the committee also had other correspondence in relation to this. The big worry was that in relation to discharging, they found that: There are real concerns that the process of discharging individuals from wardship is not consistently reflecting the spirit and guiding principles of the assisted decision-making Act. While the intention of the legislation is to promote autonomy and supported decision-making, the practical implementation can appear more restrictive than the law intends. I would be somewhat worried in relation to the numbers. Some 390 wards have been fully discharged; 38 individuals required no decision making-support; 40 required co-decision-making agreements; and 313 were discharged with decision-making representatives. The St. John of God representatives provided me with examples, without getting into the ins and outs of names, of those who had been within their service who had been wards of court. The particular issue was that they would have found that these are people with capacity. They may have had an inheritance, and they were legacy wards of court due to the money they had. That was seen at a point in time as safety and security but the representatives believe, and believe they have shown over many years, that these people have capacity. Therefore, the spirit of this legislation, as difficult as it is for them, is that we remove, in some cases, the guardrails at times and provide people with the freedom to make decisions within certain constraints. However, they said that in an awful lot of these cases, a decision-making representative was put in. They said the idea was that a decision-making representative would only be used when a decision of importance was in the offing, such as a major health determination or a major financial decision. I met them at Hilltop services in Dundalk. The example they gave was that if someone wanted to go shopping in Newry, they would have to make contact with the DMR, so where there was an attempt to provide freedom back through the Act it was not happening. The reason we agreed not to put it to a vote, which we would have lost even if some Government Members were quite worried that would be the case, was that we did not want to create a situation for those who may have found themselves in limbo. One thing I am happy about is that the representatives of the Department and the Courts Service are engaging with St. John of God intellectual disability services. It is vital that they get to a point of reconciliation, for want of a better term. They had also spoken about certain protections and reassessments that could happen around capacity. That needs to happen. That is in relation to the process that is ongoing. I ask that the Minister of State take an interest in that and ensure that we get to the bottom of those issues because as much as we need to ensure the process is given the legislative cover to be elongated, because the capacity was not there in the first place, we need to ensure the process is correct. There are wider issues with assisted decision-making, particularly in relation to banking. Banks are being far too protective - for example, where disability services were able to get a bank account with two names on it, that is no longer the case - and they are creating a lot of hassle. The review process will be vital for that. The first time that St. John of God representatives came to me, they were worried they would be removing protections for people, but they say they have taken account of the spirit of the law. They have introduced their own guardrails around it and it has worked for people. Mistakes have been made but people have learned. It is providing people with that freedom and I am not sure that is there at the moment.

Sentiment score: 0.16