Mr. Noel Dowling:

We are revisiting them. There is a review of those cases being undertaken by Ms Mary O'Toole SC as well as her work on the 15 cases where there are capacity issues. There have been developments on that only this morning. Ms O'Toole has suggested that rather than to give a general recommendation on how we deal with capacity issues overall, she has suggested that she should make recommendations on each of the individual cases. I do not think we will be standing in her way in respect of that.

To stay on the issue of capacity as the Deputy has raised it, there were three routes we were looking at to deal with these cases. We have no desire to hang onto the money which is properly the property of the women concerned. The original intention was to use the assisted decision-making legislation, but there have been delays there which mean the necessary regulations and processes will not be in place until next year. As such, that approach is not really possible. The next route is the wards of court process, but it is a very significant decision in respect of any person to make him or her a ward of court. The third route is one we have been exploring with the HSE which is the possibility of using the private property accounts scheme whereby the money belonging to each woman would be held by the HSE and disbursed to her according to need. We cannot, obviously, predict what recommendation will be made by Ms O'Toole, but it seems the principal route will remain the ward of court procedure.