Ms Clare Duffy:

It protects people if they lose their capacity. It protects them. If I, God forbid, lost my capacity or developed dementia, while I still have the capacity and have not developed the disease, I can go to my solicitor and say that in the event that I lose capacity, I will allow my husband, for example, to make decisions regarding my financial affairs, my health and whatever else so that if I developed dementia, it would be a simple case of him activating enduring power of attorney. That is very emotional and we sometimes do not understand how emotional it is to activate an enduring power of attorney. Such power would give my husband the power to make those decisions on my behalf. If there is no enduring power of attorney, we have to navigate the new Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, which is great but complicated. It is complicated for families. The Chair asked what are the things the committee needs to take away from the meeting and one of them is that we need to fund supports for the families of people with dementia and those who lack capacity or have diminished capacity to help them navigate the new capacity legislation.

The Act was commenced on 26 April last year and one of the big findings that is emerging is that families are in and out of the Circuit Court because they do not understand what was needed in the first instance. Therefore, we need to support the families to navigate that really important, but very complicated, Act. Even when we would engage with the HSE and the DSS, which are doing great work, we remind the representatives that their language is really legalistic and cannot be understood. Even with things such as the affidavits and the forms that families need, it is confusing and we need to simplify that in order that the families of people with dementia know what they need to do if they are making a fair deal scheme application or whatever it might be. Actually, the majority of applications for people with dementia to the Circuit Court are coming from the fair deal scheme.