Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is very welcome that the Minister seeks to reform and expand AHDs and to ensure that preferences of people with psychosocial disabilities are protected but I am concerned that amendment No. 42 creates further confusion because it creates a piecemeal provision.

It feels as though the amendment pays lip service to the protection of rights while allowing them to be undermined on the basis of so-called risk. Risk is not a neutral term in a disability context. Ideas of risks and dangers have been used for decades to justify the denial of rights and abuse of disabled people, from institutionalisation to forced sterilisation. We have all heard stories of how people have been treated.

All the evidence demonstrates that people with psychosocial disabilities are at increased risk of being subject to violence and abuse. I wonder whether this creates a two-tier approach to the validity of AHDs, where a person can rely on one where he or she is detained on the ground that he or she requires treatment and that can only be provided at an approved centre, but not where the person is detained where it is believed that he or she may be at risk of causing harm.

Will the Government create situations where someone may believe his or her AHD will be binding, should he or she be subjected to the Mental Health Act but may, nevertheless, be forcibly treated? I am not sure that this is as clear as it could be. If the current reforms to the Mental Health Act are similar to the heads of Bill the Government published in July last year, this amendment will mean very little, as the Government is proposing to amalgamate the need for treatment on the grounds for the criteria of protection and harm.

The amendment retains the discriminatory exclusion of people who have been conditionally discharged under the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2010 from relying on their AHDs. These are people who have experienced stigmatisation due to being subject to the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2006. It is unacceptable for them to be further excluded by being unable to have their decision-making rights respected.

To ensure that the AHDs are available in a non-discriminatory manner to anyone, perhaps this amendment should be withdrawn. I do not know that it will do what it says and I am interested in what the Minister has to say on that.