Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth

General Scheme of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Bill 2021: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. John Dunne:

I am not sure I would say there is a different way of approaching it. The die is cast and we have the 2015 Act. It is based on the presumption that everybody is competent all of the time until a court rules that they are not and that this assessment, except in certain circumstances, can only be a temporary one. It is a very shifting pile of sand to be building something on.

It is significant that 140-odd other countries decided not to go that route, but we have taken it. To be fair, we are part of the coalition of the willing. We want this to work. We are happy to work to try to make it work. We believe that, in the long run, it is capable of working. We do not have an issue with any of that. We hear major alarm bells with regard to how we get from here to there because, based on the DSS numbers, it is going to take at least ten years. To be frank, the law will be a mess during those ten years. I would not be surprised if it collapses under the weight of its own internal contradictions during that time. We will then have an even bigger mess because we will have a whole lot of people who are established under the new legal system while the legal system itself is under attack regarding its inconsistencies. I do not have a solution to that. I am willing to work constructively. I am just trying to point out the most immediate and glaring difficulties. If I had the rest of the day, I could provide another 25, but these are the big ones.