Slane Men Shed light on the ‘Enduring Power of Attorney’

Members of men’s shed across Meath and many of their partners, attended a recent talk on 'Enduring Power of Attorney' which was hosted by Slane Men’s Shed.

Patsy Fitzsimons, Head of Complaints and Investigations, at the Decision Support Service told of a woman who contacted him recently whose husband had a stroke at age 40.

"She couldn’t access his bank account to pay the mortgage because he was incapacitated and there was no enduring power of attorney arrangement in place to enable access.

"This is just one of many examples of how important it is for people to have enduring power of attorney arrangements in place so that their lives are not disrupted further when strokes, heart attacks and similar events happen that cause people to become either permanently or temporarily incapacitated."

The Decision Support Service is a state body and is a unit within the Mental Health Commission. Its role is to promote the rights and interests of people who may need support with decision-making.

Ms Fitzsimons said that to date the Decision Support Service had registered some 4,000 enduring power of attorney arrangements since the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 commenced in April 2023.

"There’s a widespread myth that close relatives or ‘next of kin’ have automatic rights to access the bank accounts and other financial documents of close relatives who may lack capacity to make their own decisions. This is not the case and, for that reason, it is essential that each one of us puts arrangements in place, such as an enduring power of attorney, to ensure that we can empower someone we trust to make decisions for us should a time come when we are unable to make them for ourselves.

"The Decision Support Service registers and supervises the enduring power of attorney arrangements and it investigates complaints where the standards required of the persons with enduring power of attorney are not being upheld," she said.

She also spoke about ‘advance healthcare directives’. These allow people to write down their wishes about healthcare and medical treatment decisions that might arise in the event of them losing capacity to make healthcare decisions.

"Some people don’t want certain medical procedures to apply to them and some may not wish to be resuscitated in certain circumstances. The role of these advance healthcare directives is to allow people to identify and then have their wishes respected during medical treatment".

Kevin Macken, chair of Slane Men’s Shed, said that the large turnout showed how important this whole issue was for people as they grew older and were more likely to suffer the loss of capacity through strokes, dementia, and other factors.

"In Slane we hope to be able to provide further support to our members who are interested in finding out more about power of attorney and advance healthcare directives. We’ll look at how we might be able to do this through the provision of more information and assistance to use the online facilities for registering agreements."