Professor Brendan Kelly:

Yes. I share Deputy Sherlock's concern about the word "risk". We were extremely concerned about its prominence in earlier versions of the Bill. The current version has amended this slightly to include the exceptionally confusing concept of risk to health, which seems to be getting the word "risk" in but not really meaning risk. I do not think there is any way out of this risk issue, apart from eliminating it entirely and focusing on need for treatment, treatment, and likelihood of benefit from treatment. They are areas in which we are a lot more confident than predicting who will or will not do something like harming themselves or others. These are very real concerns. Treatment is likely to reduce those risks, but in advance we are unable to predict those risks with anything like a statistical or actuarial precision to justify deprivation of liberty.