Mary Henry (Independent)

I congratulate Senator Mansergh on his wise words. We all know other members of Fianna Fáil are extremely worried about this Bill because they have told us. Will the Deputy Leader reconsider and allow us to take Committee Stage next week? Everyone has spoken of their concern about section 4 and the definition of "prescribed diseases and disability". Has anyone in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform consulted members of the medical profession who are supposed to enforce this? When I saw the words "prescribed diseases", I thought it related to public health but when I tried to find out how those in public health felt about it, no one could tell me anything. As I said on the Order of Business, it was only this morning that I saw the emotive word "disability" had been removed but a far worse section has been included.

I wish to refer to what is being included as an amendment instead of "disability". Section 3(1)(a) defines "mental disorder" as meaning mental illness, severe dementia or significant intellectual disability where because of the illness, disability or dementia, there is a serious likelihood of the person concerned causing immediate and serious harm to himself or herself or to other persons. Members of the medical profession will have an ethical problem with this because their duty is first to the person before them and not to the Act.

Section 2(1) states that "mental illness" means a state of mind of a person which affects the person's thinking, perceiving, emotion or judgment and which seriously impairs these mental functions of the person to the extent that he or she requires care or medical treatment in his or her own interest or in the interest of other persons and "severe dementia" means a deterioration of the brain of a person which significantly impairs the intellectual function of the person thereby affecting thought, comprehension and memory and which includes severe psychiatric or behavioural problems such as physical aggression. That is a serious situation. "Significant intellectual disability" — we should remember the Special Olympics — means a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind of a person which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of that person. We are excluding people who, as Senator O'Toole said, have Down's syndrome and autism. There is no need for the Minister of State to shake his head.