Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Some important points were raised. Cultural change is something we discussed to a great extent in respect of other legislation, the Birth Information and Tracing Act, which is very much about moving away from a hierarchical, patriarchal model of decision-making. How is that changing in this legislation? I briefly mentioned the principles section in section 8 of the 2015 Act, the original Act. To further my understanding, I find it useful to consider the Act as a whole, rather than a specific section, and also the notion of the will and preference of the individual being interwoven throughout. Let us examine some of the guiding principles set out in section 8 of the Act:

8. (1) The principles set out in subsections (2)to (10)shall apply for the purposes of an intervention in respect of a relevant person, and the intervener shall give effect to those principles accordingly.

(2) It shall be presumed that a relevant person who falls within paragraph (a)of the definition of "relevant person" in section 2(1)has capacity in respect of the matter concerned unless the contrary is shown in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

(3) A relevant person who falls within paragraph (a)of the definition of "relevant person" in section 2(1)shall not be considered as unable to make a decision in respect of the matter concerned unless all practicable steps have been taken, without success, to help him or her to do so.

A range of safeguards is set out in section 8. There are ten elements to it. The key point is that the presumption of capacity is at the absolute centre of the legislation. Second, that presumption can be rebutted only where all efforts have been made to assist an individual in terms of their capacity. Everything we are doing in this Bill is to assist people to be able to exercise their own capacity. That is central to what we are achieving.

On the question of how we examine this, a key component is the decision support service. The system is not operating in the ether; it is overseen by a resourced body that focuses explicitly on providing supports to people with some limitation of capacity. That is central to what we are doing. The guiding principles are central to what the legislation seeks to achieve.