Ms Áine Flynn:

I share the Deputy's view on timelines, to a large extent. We are committed to a timeline taking us up to commencement and, subject to the dependencies I mentioned, it is a timeline we hope to meet.

On the question about the scope of an order, it is a court order and the Act has quite a level of detail about that. We hope to engage further with court personnel and the Judiciary to provide input on training and a uniform approach insofar as possible, and a shared understanding of the Act and its ethos. The Act sets out time limits for a review of a declaration of incapacity. The declaration has to brought back before the court and kept under review. I think the recommendation is for every 12 months or, at the most, every three years where there is a perception that the person is not going to recover capacity. Even within that timeframe, the relevant person has a pathway back to court to seek to re-enter the matter and to have the court revisit the finding that he or she lacks capacity, and it can then revisit the decision-making representation order that has been put in place. The Act is quite strong on the business of review and the continuing right of access to the court, and that is important for all sorts of considerations relating to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD.

The other, lower tier arrangements are subject to periodic review by us as well. I refer in particular to the middle tier, the co-decision-making arrangement. We have to be satisfied that a person's capacity, as declared under that arrangement, remains the true position. There is quite a degree of oversight, and the Act in its drafting has been clearly person-centred in that regard.

To respond to the question on interveners, which relates to section 8 on the guiding principles under the Act, this has been something of a theme of ours and we have raised it with the Department of Health, and previously with the Department of Justice. I do not want to get too niche or technical about it but those guiding principles I mentioned are really important. They include the concept of will and preference, which is really at the heart of the Act. They apply to interveners as defined, and interveners in turn are quite narrowly defined under the Act. They are a category of persons that includes all the decision supporters I mentioned, the court, my own role and healthcare professionals carrying out a function under the Act. A person is an intervener when he or she is carrying out an intervention, which in turn has quite a narrow definition.

Why are we taking these guiding principles, which also govern how we even assess capacity, and narrowing them down to quite a fixed category of people doing fixed things? If this is about ushering in a new ethos and approach, why is it not just how we all do things in the future, relative to somebody who may have an issue with their decision-making capacity? That is an idea that has gone back and forth a bit, and while I do not want to speak out of turn, it may be addressed in the amending legislation.

Having said that, the ethos and the key ideas of autonomy and respect for will and preference are taking hold in any event. I mentioned that they can already be seen in other policy and standards, and they are infiltrating how we approach people who may have an issue with their decision-making capacity. They can also be seen in other standards throughout health and social care. That idea of a rights-based approach is taking hold. It has been a theme of mine that I would have liked to see those guiding principles have a general application, but there may be-----