Nem Kearns:

I fully agree that we have the expertise and the solutions.

We lack joined-up thinking but I would go further by saying there is inertia in the system. There is lack of ambition to make the wholesale changes that are necessary, which are possible but will be hard. Any systemic change is difficult. We know that funding is being invested in areas that do not pay dividends and do not achieve results but it is too complicated to change. It is not even that the funding is lacking, the funding is not being allocated to where it will do the most good because it would require systemic change. What is needed and what is recognised as needed is, as has been said, a needs-led service across the board. However, that would mean that the State would have to do a lot of hard work to update all of the aspects ranging from provisions in the Disability Act to social welfare criteria, in order that everything was coming from a need-led perspective. We are inheriting a very medicalised view where we use extremely narrow laundry lists and tick boxes to indicate impairments and sometimes they are ridiculously narrow. A number of them have been struck down by the High Court and identified as discriminatory. Unfortunately, the State's response in a number of these cases has been to remove the support entirely rather than remove the very narrow criteria. There is an unwillingness to have a paradigm shift to a needs-led, not-diagnosis based, provision of supports and services. To date, we have not seen an appetite for the necessary paradigm shift.

I very much appreciate the Deputy's question on the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022. While it is brilliant to see the Act eventually being enacted after a long delay, we are in danger of missing an opportunity. The Act was brought in to bring us into alignment with Article 12 of the CRPD. The legislation that we have enacted falls somewhat short but is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to positively impact the lives and rights of disabled people. One area of particular concern is that the Decision Support Service, DSS, has not been fully resourced and equipped to provide a support service. As the DSS seems to be setting up to provide an information service, there is a risk that there will be a gap.

As members will know, the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022 replaces the Lunacy Regulation (Ireland) Act 1871 of the Victorian era and the system of wardship, which viewed legal capacity as a very binary matter. It meant that if a person did not pass the functional capacity test, then all of one's rights, for all the decisions of one's life, were removed and handed to a third party. The principle and spirt of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act was to undo that system and transition people into being decision-makers in their own lives, and support people who needed support in order that everyone could make the decisions they were able to make, no matter what support they needed to make their decisions. Unfortunately, the DSS does not have the necessary resources to provide decision-making support. That means, by default, a number of these people, if they do not already have a decision-making person of their own, may just be under a rebranded disempowering system. It does not have to be the Decision Support Service if the service is not funded and equipped to provide the necessary support. The State needs to urgently identify a means for people to access independent decision support makers. People need to be able to make a free decision to choose a family member or an independent person. The decision needs to be a free choice or else we are perpetuating the system that we seek to replace.

It is extremely important and urgent that this issue be addressed. As the Deputy said, the decision is coming into effect from tomorrow. It is particularly important that disabled people's organisations and people from the centre for disability law and policy in the University of Galway are brought in, consulted and allowed to help the State to identify the appropriate place for decisions to happen. It cannot be left as a gap. This is a fantastic opportunity for Ireland to step up and provide a means for ensuring the rights of all disabled people, all ageing people, all people who may suffer a mental health crisis or a traumatic brain injury, which could happen to any of us, and, indeed, all people in this State are upheld. If people have the right to make their own decisions, that will have the knock-on effect of improving autistic lives and all our lives. If autistic people can choose the services they need, the supports they want and how they want to communicate, it will have an untold effect, but that will not happen if we miss this opportunity we have been given.