Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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This pertains to the Juries Act 1976. I will refer to section 1(1)(a) of this Bill. I have not yet tabled an amendment to this part of the Bill but I will do so. It relates to the provision of Irish Sign Language, ISL, interpreters to allow a deaf person to serve on a jury. I welcome that greatly. We should include those who are hard of hearing with those who are deaf. Additionally, an interpreter is not necessarily the only service that could be provided to a deaf person or a person hard of hearing to perform jury service effectively. There are people who are hard of hearing or those with cochlear implants who can use technologies like captioning and so on. The Bill as drafted does not allow for that. Not all deaf people can read English and not all have ISL, for many reasons. We must go beyond just ISL and look at the use of technology. It is the first element of the amendment.

The second part was explained by Deputy Chambers. It is critical that language and how we approach these matters is dealt with properly. The assisted decision-making legislation moves away from a status approach to capacity based on having a disability and moves towards a functional approach in which the presumption of capacity is there until it is clearly not the case. Capacity is based on ability to understand at the time a decision is made and in context with the available choices at the time. We are removing the certainty of the statement "does not have mental capacity". It is a case of saying it might be the case at a particular time but not necessarily forever that these people might not be in a position to possess the capacity to engage in jury service. This is key and language is not neutral. It suggests there is a constant standard for mental capacity before it is needed, which would be the day of jury service. People may be told they cannot serve because they will not in future have the capacity to do so. That language is too definite.

The assisted decision-making legislation is clear about the need to assess capacity and understand what can be done at a particular time. It is what we are looking at. There is nuanced difference between our amendment and the amendment proposed by Deputy Ó Laoghaire. I would prefer for ours to be accepted, but if it is not, the alternative should be accepted.