Colleagues from DSBA and I met with the Director of the Decision Support Service, Ms Aine Flynn and her team last week.
The meeting was helpful and I am most grateful to the Director and her staff for their very quick response and cordial approach.
We did receive clarification and reached agreement on some matters which may assist practitioners, which I set out below:

• If a donor wishes to instruct a solicitor in assisting them to create an EPA, there is no impediment to this;
• If a solicitor is acting, that will be noted by the DSS on their system;
• The DSS encourages as many Donors and attorneys as possible to use their on-line portal as they believe it will be more efficient in the future (especially when it comes to enrolment of the EPA)
• If a client wishes to instruct a solicitor to act on their behalf in the creation of an EPA, the DSS will, on receipt of a written authority, accept it and engage with the solicitor directly;
• There is no obligation on the Donor to provide PPSN (see ID verification form);
• The DSS will make available ID forms on the website
• If a solicitor writes with letter of authority and completed ID forms, pre-populated forms with a unique [for the individual donor] identification code, will be sent by DSS to the solicitor;
• Once the solicitor has prepared the EPA, it can be scanned as a pdf document and sent to DSS which they in turn will upload onto their system.

We have asked the DSS to consider a solicitor-portal to the online system in a way that is similar to the Revenue Commissioners (ROS) and Tailte (Landdirect). This is not anticipated.

No doubt it will take some time for all the implications for the new system to become apparent and DSBA will continue to monitor the situation and make representations where appropriate. The requirement for online users to have PSC cards and MyGovID concerns us and we will make further representations regarding this.

DSBA Mental Health and Capacity Committee will hold a seminar in the coming weeks with an update and advice for practitioners in navigating the new system which we hope will be of assistance to members.

A further update will follow as soon as more information comes to hand.

The DSS have informed me that they intend to publish an FAQs document to address legal practitioners’ queries in the coming week.

Susan Martin

President DSBA