Ms Estela Vidal:

Overall, I agree with all my colleagues. We welcome the role of the authorised officer. We believe it is contributing towards what we are bringing forward today, which is a human rights approach. From Shine's perspective, and I am sure from other perspectives as well, we wish to emphasise two points. One is that we strongly believe that role must be complemented by the independent role of the advocacy person. We also wish to emphasise the importance of information and knowledge. While we agree the role of the authorised officer is very important, as Ms Byrne mentioned, 74% of the respondents to the survey that we did in preparation for this meeting did not know what that was or that it existed. We suggest that the committee, if possible, consider the possibility of launching an awareness campaign when this process is finished to give the public the highlights of the new revised Mental Health Act, and that this goes together with highlights from the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, so that people are aware that this is new and this is coming.