Saturday, March 11, 2017

Mary Donnelly on Policy and Principles in the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015


Mary Donnelly - Casey Photography 
This a summary of the presentation by Mary Donnelly to the Legal Capacity Conference 2016 at University College Cork. The summary was written by Joanna Ralston.

More information on the Legal Capacity Conference - http://imhla.ie/events/.

Slides and videos from the conference –

http://www.ucc.ie/law/docs/mentalhealth/conferences/capacity-2016.shtml

Mary Donnelly is a Professor at the School of Law, University College Cork.  The title of her presentation was ‘Policy and Principles in the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015’.

Professor Donnelly highlighted some of the policy issues and principles contained in the 2015 Act. She stated that she had some very serious concerns about resources and how we are going to face the challenge of giving this Act effect in reality.
Professor Donnelly spoke about the fact that there will be many stumbling blocks along the way but that yet there is also a lot of potential in the Act.
In referring to some of the principles of the Act, Professor Donnelly spoke about the looseness of the language contained in the Act. She asked, how are these principles going to be given effect in practice?
Professor Donnelly referred to the Act as being complex containing 146 sections. Implementation of the Act will require extensive regulations and codes of practice. Professor Donnelly was of the view that she would like to see a provision contained in the Code of Practice that would enable us to see and to know how the Act is working in practice.

Mary Donnelly’s slides:
http://www.ucc.ie/law/docs/mentalhealth/conferences/11.00-Mary-Donnelly.pdf

Video of Mary Donnelly’s Presentation

[Photos by Casey Photography]

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