Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is a mammoth Bill, as everyone involved knows. It will change how people who are close to others will have to think. Changing how people think is a major task. My preference would be to introduce the legislation on an incremental basis because the people it affects are people with whom time will have to be spent to explain exactly what its impact is and what it makes possible for their own circumstances. On that basis, two years is far too short a period after which to review the legislation. The Bill will have an impact on everyone's life, whether as a carer or as someone being cared for. It will have a significant impact. Five years will be seen in hindsight to be a very short period in which to allow the legislation to become embedded and part of the institutional structures which will take us into the future. I consider two years to be too short, and I do not say so to be awkward; I believe it. I am still fascinated by the fact that the Mental Health Act 2001 is already being reviewed even though it was due to be reviewed much earlier. Clearly, all of the elements had not been put in place. Now that it is being reviewed, we can look back and ask what we would do differently. We will be doing the same with the legislation before us and determining how it has dovetailed with other Acts.

I can understand the Deputy's desire to have a review more quickly because we are always worried that something may just be something else for the shelf. Clearly, when it is legislation, it cannot be something else for the shelf. As such, we must be careful about how we proceed. There will be certain groups in society whom we can move more quickly with, but there will also be those on whom this will have an impact and with whom we will have to be very careful and tread very softly. I am not saying "No" to the Deputy's amendment for the sake of saying "No." I believe genuinely that it needs more time, just as the wards of court matter that we dealt with earlier needs more than six months. I accept fully that the Deputy's job is to ensure that it happens as quickly as possible, but five years is a reasonable timeframe. If it happens more quickly, happy days, but five years is a decent timeframe in terms of the type of legislation this is.

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