Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their considerable contributions and opening statements. I also thank them for recognising what is positive as well as articulating extremely well what the challenges are. They have my ongoing commitment, as a member of this committee and as a Government party Senator, to advocate, push, lobby and ensure the programme for Government commitments are adhered to.

I come from a privacy background as a privacy lawyer and it is ingrained in me to have privacy by design. One of the things that came out of the meeting on International Women's Day of this Committee on Disability Matters was the idea of ability by design, that everything across Government needs to have that. One of the main outcomes of that for me was to pursue the commencement of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and to speak about that, and the following Friday I had a Commencement matter with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, to discuss that very matter. In my previous life, I dealt with how that Act, coupled with the general data protection regulation, GDPR, could empower people with disabilities, when it came to decision-making, in having access to all of their information, so I came to it with a little bit of background in how to deal with that. While I have no doubt the rest of the committee will deal with all of the other serious matters the witnesses discussed, I want to devote my time to the assisted decision-making aspect, if that is all right.

In the Commencement matter, when the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was replying, she stated the Act is expected to be commenced in full by June of next year but that there are two impediments or delays, the first of which is the setting up of the decision support service, although recruitment on that is under way, and the second of which is amendments to the Act are now needed before it is commenced.

Could the witnesses elaborate, for the benefit of the general public and everybody else, on the difference that having the Act in place will make? What amendments would they encourage us to support and advocate in advance of the Minister publishing amendments?