Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I add my voice to what many of my colleagues have spoken about and we are glad that we are getting to grips with an issue we have failed miserably with in this State over many years. However, I cannot help but think that this Bill is somewhat too rushed. We have heard Members say already that questions remain on its workability and on whether it is failing. That is on either side of the argument on assisted decision-making and dealing with the wider issue of capacity. Like I said, we have a history in this State of failing to deal with these issues. We literally hid people away in big institutions and we definitely did not look after their needs. We all know we are trying to move to a better place.

I would reiterate an awful lot of what Deputy Cathal Crowe said about special needs education and the fact that there have been mass improvements but that we still have a planning deficit in seeing the needs that are there, including education or anything else. The Minister of State and I have dealt with a number of disability issues that cross housing and that are somewhat complicated. If there is a difficulty, I imagine the interaction between the Minister of State and Louth County Council will not be perfect but hopefully we will bring that to a conclusion in this Bill. It shows the fact that we have not allowed for dealing with issues of disability. I know some people have brought up with me the issue of ensuring we have workability in decision support services. There may be people who lack capacity and unfortunately we may end up in a court setting before we can trigger what is needed. I am always afraid of anything that relates to courts from the point of view that they are backlogged. These are situations where people are trying to facilitate those people with their financial matters and all the rest of it. That is accepting that we are also coming from a place where we want to protect people who have been manipulated and have found themselves in difficult circumstances over the years.

We support the fact that we need reform and legislation on wards of court and we need to make sure we have a better process in play. We also need to fulfil our obligations under the UNCRPD in that regard. Many of my colleagues have mentioned that we will be putting amendments and we hope these will be taken as they are intended from the point of view of us getting to a better situation. The Minister of State alluded earlier to the fact that there is still a need for a greater amount of interaction with the stakeholders, namely, the disability groups and the people who will fall under this bracket. We need to ensure we allow enough time for all this to happen.

See this speech in context