Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Bill is very welcome in order that vulnerable adults can be cared for in their decision-making process. The original Act was very difficult for families to navigate to support their vulnerable family members. The Bill will ensure vulnerable adults are protected from coercion and abuse when making important decisions. I welcome, in particular, that a person's previous preferences will be considered, while the views of individuals named by the person will also be taken into account. This is designed to support them. I welcome also the appointment of a decision-making assistant agreement, which will allow someone to designate a trusted person as his or her assistant.

In the past month, I have been contacted by the owners of a number of long-term care facilities who are very upset that their service users are being put in undue distress due to the banking protocol. People in an intellectual disability setting who are in the care of the State have received letters from the Department of Social Protection. The letters stated their payments were at the time being made into an Ulster Bank account and that they were required to open an account with another bank. They currently have bank accounts with which they bank compliantly. These service users now must get passports and proof of address even if they have never left the country. They are entitled to income benefits as citizens of the State. They now need someone to accompany them to get a passport, which removes their autonomy and requires them to sign forms they know nothing about. The banks have got away with so much as they say goodbye to the vulnerable.

A number of my constituents recently visited bank branches, in line with their fathers' and mothers' wishes, as appointed signatories on their accounts and were told they would have to make their parents wards of court. This led to great distress for the families, and I am glad the Bill will address such scenarios happening in the future.

I welcome the Bill. For far too long, the banks have caused an awful lot of problems in this context. I have been contacted by people who for years have been looking after their parents' accounts after their parents started to show early signs of dementia.

They went in and asked the bank's advice on what to do. They were told they were a co-signatory, that that was all they had to do and that they could work away. Now with the banking protocol we have people apologising and saying the person is now a ward of court. There was misinformation given to people by the banks. I do not blame the bank staff. I blame the top shelf in the banking sector for not informing staff about how to deal with this, making sure they were compliant and giving proper advice to people who were caring for a person. That is where the buck lies here. It is true the Government is doing something now to try to protect this going forward but how many thousands of people went to the banks asking what they should do with people in a vulnerable state? They knew themselves they needed a person they could trust. How many families went as a unit and asked the same thing and awarded somebody within their family to care for the person? They might have lived in a different part of the country and so asked a brother, sister, aunt or somebody to look after the person. They went to the bank with them and asked what they needed to do. Those in the bank told them all they needed to do was to be a signatory. It is the banks that are wrong here and, as I have stated, not their staff. They should have got the proper information to give to people but they did not. It is another issue this Dáil and Government must clean up to help people, which I welcome. However, we must ensure the banks are also held accountable because there is no accountability on the top shelf. They seem to push the blame down the line in their different branches.

I hope the Government holds banks to account and holds to account the high levels of the banking sector for the misinformation it gave to a lot of people throughout this country. We bailed out the banks once and it is now time the banks were accountable for the misinformation they have given the people.

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