RIGHT OF PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY TO MAKE OWN DECISIONS WILL BE CALLED FOR AT INCLUSION IRELAND SEMINAR

• Ireland in danger of being out of line with UN Convention

New legislation concerning decision making and people with an intellectual disability will be called for at Inclusion Ireland’s Parent’s Seminar tomorrow, November 3rd, where serious questions will be raised about the compatibility of the current Irish Wardship system with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the Irish Government signed up to last August. International expert Michael Bach will state that “people with intellectual disabilities have had their basic rights to self-determination systematically abolished by others taking on the authority to make decisions for them”. Long Stay Health Charges will also be discussed as charges were imposed on people with an intellectual disability in residential care as well as on elderly people.

The Seminar is divided into two sessions.

In the session dealing with Decision Making Capacity:

• Irish Solicitor Máirín McCartney will highlight that the Wardship Act dates back 130 years. Ms. McCartney will also reference practical problems in this area, such as difficulties where women with an intellectual disability have children and are unable to care for the child. The child cannot be adopted if the woman cannot give her consent to the adoption. As a result the child remains in long term foster care rather than having the benefits of legal adoption. 

In the session dealing with Long-Stay Health Charges:

• Walter Freyne, Director of Services at Daughters of Charity Services, Dublin will give a service provider’s perspective on long-stay charges.Séamus McNulty, Assistant National Director of the HSE with Responsibility for Mental Health and Disabilities will speak from the HSE’s perspective.Kevin Doyle, who has four children with an intellectual disability, will provide a parent’s perspective on long-stay health charges.
• Director of the HSE’s National Co-Ordination Unit of the Long Stay Charges Repayment Scheme Pat Marron will discuss the implementation of the repayment scheme, including statistics on repayments completed to date, both to living patients and to estates, as well as discussing who is and is not, entitled to claim. Bernard Haddigan will discuss legal and background issues to the scheme, including the hiring of an outside company to make repayments

After both sessions, a lengthy ‘Open Forum’ will take place, with barrister Teresa Blake and Deputy Mary O’Rourke each chairing a session. 

Michael Bach – Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Association for Community Living

• “…substitute decision-making should always be a last resort. The problem is that for far too many people with intellectual disabilities it has become the first.  Families are being forced by health care, financial and community service systems into placing their adult family members under wardship or guardianship simply because alternative supported decision making provisions and community services are not yet in place. The UN Convention calls on governments and civil society to rectify that situation.  The cost to human liberty, it has finally been determined, is simply too high.”

Máirín McCartney – Solicitor: Irish perspective on Supported Decision Making

• “Historically parents and carers made all decisions for adults with intellectual disability on the basis that they were protecting and acting in the best interests of that individual. The approach to capacity and decision-making issues is now influenced by the concepts of autonomy and self-determination.”
• “I am surprised to see a section in the proposed legislation,(Mental Capacity and Guardianship Bill 2007 - introduced as a private members bill in the Seanad in February of this year but with the change of Government the bill was never finalised and was not passed as an Act),stating that the law concerning consent and capacity to marry, to divorce, to adopt or to vote in an election shall not be affected by the proposed new legislation and the pre-existing rules apply to those four areas. The effect of that provision is that there is no presumption of capacity to marry, to divorce, to adopt or to vote. The Law Reform Commission recommended that there should be a presumption of capacity to marry but for some reason the Bill does not include that presumption.”

  ENDS

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