Ms Áine Flynn:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the invitation. I am joined by my collegues Aoife McMahon, head of Decision Support Service, DSS, registrations, and Ian Grehan, head of DSS opoerations. My colleague Orla Keane, general counsel for the Mental Health Commission DSS sends her apologies. The Mental Health Commission is the regulator for mental health services in Ireland. It is an independent statutory body established in 2001 under the Mental Health Acts with a statutory mandate to promote, encourage and foster the establishment and maintenance of high standards and good practices in the delivery of mental health services and to protect the interests of persons admitted and detained under the Mental Health Acts. The Decision Support Service is a national public-facing service established within the Mental Health Commission under the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, as amended.

The director of the DSS and the director’s staff are staff of the Mental Health Commission with separate functions conferred by the 2015 Act. The Act commenced on 26 April 2023. The reforms that the Act introduced include: the repeal of adult wardship under the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act 1871; a statutory functional assessment of capacity, which is non-diagnostic, time-specific and issue-specific; guiding principles that emphasise personal autonomy, minimal restriction of rights and freedoms and respect for a person’s will and preferences; a three-tier framework to support decision-making; new provisions for advance planning; and the establishment of the DSS with our functions. The DSS has many statutory functions, the principal of which are to promote public awareness and confidence about the 2015 Act, to be a source of information and guidance and to register and supervise the performance of decision support arrangements.

Communications and stakeholder engagement are very important. This is a far-reaching Act and the DSS meets regularly with diverse stakeholders in health and social care, banking and financial services, the legal profession and public bodies, disability services providers, voluntary organisations and family carers. Our most important stakeholders are the potential users of our service. We convened a stakeholder forum of experts by experience in 2022, all of whom are persons with disabilities. This forum meets quarterly, facilitated by Inclusion Ireland, and the forum members provide vital feedback on our resources and operations.

The demand for reliable information about the 2015 Act and the DSS is a constant. Our information services team, which includes a dedicated enduring power of attorney helpdesk, answers 600 to 700 calls per week. We have delivered two national multimedia information campaigns to raise public awareness. Our next campaign will focus on promoting advance planning by adults, which is the aspect of the Act that makes it an Act for everyone. The DSS publishes monthly statistics on decision support arrangements. As of the end of September 2025, we had 6,096 registered decision arrangements, of which more than two-thirds are enduring powers of attorney. We are now supervising the performance of over 2,000 active decision supporters.

Turning to discharge from wardship, the DSS is not involved in the management of applications for discharge from wardship under Part 6 of the 2015 Act. These applications, as we have been hearing, are managed by the Office of Wards of Court in the Courts Service. One of the functions of the DSS is to establish a panel of independent and suitable decision-making representatives. When requested by the wardship court, the DSS has supplied nominations from this panel of decision-making representatives. If the former ward is discharged subject to a new decision support arrangement under the Act, the DSS takes up registration of the court order and supervision of the decision supporter who has been appointed.

The DSS has published information about what the 2015 Act means for wards of court. The service has also supported the Office of Wards of Court, attending at five in-person regional events this year for wards and their committees and families. In September 2025, the service invited an organisation representing the interests of families of wards to a meeting at which we provided reassurance and clarification around the potential future role of the service in their families' lives. We are very happy to continue with this engagement.

The DSS has multiple functions and we are committed to a culture of continuous improvement in our delivery of those functions. It should also be noted that the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act is much bigger than the service and involves numerous stakeholders. The successful real world implementation of the Act depends on the development of knowledge, leadership and best practice in all relevant organisations and sectors to ensure that the promise of this legislation is realised. We appreciate the invitation to attend today, we are happy to take questions, and we look forward to our continuing engagement with this committee.