Ms ?ine Flynn:

The idea of these amendments to Part 6 is to create parity between current wards of court and the so-called relevant person under Part 5 of the Act, who would be the subject of an application under Part 6 of the new procedure in that court process. They will have access to a scheme of legal aid; it is not means-tested. They do not have to satisfy criteria that might ordinarily apply to show chances of success or a risk-benefit analysis; it is an accessible scheme of legal aid, it is to be hoped. The Legal Aid Board may have better information about that.

The second question was about presumption of capacity, which is the law already. It is the common law position; it should apply even in wardship that an adult is presumed to have capacity. The Act is simply putting on a statutory basis what is already the position; there should not be any kind of transformative aspect to that, it should be happening already. There is some contention around the propriety of a functional assessment of capacity, which we could speak about for quite a while, but it is already the law also and has been. It has been the common law position for the past 14 years since 2008 and is already operating and adopted in policy and standards documents. It is very much with us already.