I have just turned 65 and, as part of my journey towards retirement, I decided to get an EPA [enduring power of attorney] in place.
My wife fully supported my decision as the incidence of dementia in my family is high. She decided to have an EPA as well.
We started the journey online in September and it’s ongoing. The system is complicated and there is no feedback. We downloaded, completed and signed all the documentation.
Then, when uploading, it’s not clear which is attached to which section as the names are different.
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I contacted the DSS [Decision Support Service] in November for an update and finally discovered it’s necessary for appointed attorneys to also be signed up to DSS, even though they have all contact details for them – email, phone, home address. This requirement is not made clear during the process.
The attorneys completed their sign-in at end of year and nothing has happened since. I have made regular phone calls, leaving messages and emails through February and cannot get any response.
The system is a joke, I’ll have dementia before it’s approved.
AK
First up, congratulations. That might jar with your sense of frustration right now but it is important to recognise your good sense in acting early to put in place arrangements for your care should you find yourself unable to make those decisions for yourself at any point.
You are doing exactly what you should. Far too many people wait until the moment of crisis (or beyond it) to try to act on drawing up an EPA, an agreement that sets down whom you want to make decisions for you and the breadth of those decisions.
That makes things much more difficult, as a court will then need to decide on the individual’s best interests, which might not necessarily chime with what they would have wanted themselves.
According to 2020 figures from the HSE and the National Dementia Office, about 64,000 people live with dementia. That was about one in every 11 people over the age of 65 at that time.
The figure is expected to nearly double to 113,000 in 10 years and to hit 150,000 by 2045.
For those who insist it is just an “old person’s disease” and that there is no rush to act, to the Dementia Services Information and Development Centre, based in St James’s Hospital, says that about 10 per cent of those living with dementia are not even 65 upon diagnosis.
And that’s just dementia. There are many other people living with catastrophic brain injury who are simply not able to make the sort of basic personal care and financial decisions the rest of us take for granted.
According to the Decision Support Service (DSS), which now oversees the drawing up and registering of EPAs, just 8 per cent of the Irish population has one. Since it took over control of the process, it says just over 8,700 EPAs have been filed, one-third of which have yet to be finalised.
Yes, you are right, the new system is somewhat clunky and certainly takes longer than the arrangements that used to be in place for EPAs. The DSS last month unveiled a new website, myepa.ie, designed, it says, “to guide individuals step by step through the process of creating an EPA in a clear and accessible way”
In place since 2023, the new system was designed to do two things: empower individuals more in terms of making decisions about their own care and move the entire system online.
It has not run entirely smoothly for a couple of reasons. First, the Law Society, whose solicitor members were at the heart of the previous regime, and the DSS, established by Government to run the new arrangement, got embroiled in a dispute in which both sides had a point but which meant significant delays or difficulties for people looking to put an enduring power of attorney in place.
Second, while much of the system is online – more so than necessary, to some degree – key elements of it are not.
First, everyone involved is required to register with the DSS online, including those whom a person wishes to appoint as their attorneys overlooking their future care. You are not alone in being flummoxed by this although it is clearly stated in the instructions.
Why it is necessary – apart from the State wanting even more details about more of its people online – is unclear. As you say, the forms will provide details of name, email and contact number anyway, which presumably is what the DSS should need.
Second, the new arrangement requires that the person making the enduring power of attorney and any attorneys they are appointing all sign the forms in the same place at the same time.
*This is nonsense, especially in a world where many people will be appointing as attorneys children who may be abroad. The sheer logistics of getting everyone together in the same place at the same time can be impossible, actively working against the DSS’s professed guiding star of empowering the individual in the choice of their care.
For its part, the DSS accepts this is an issue and says it has called for the legislation to be amended to address it.
Finally, a system determined to be “online” requires you to download and print out all documents for signing before scanning them back into a computer for submitting. For a system designed in 2023 not to make provision for electronic signatures seems daft.
The result is everyone is forced to register electronically, fill out multiple forms online, download all those forms, gather everyone connected to the application in a lawyer’s office in person to have them signed and witnessed, get the printed medical statement of capacity signed, upload all the forms again and submit them.
Clunky, as I said.
However, having gone through the process, I cannot find any evidence for your assertion that it is not clear which document needs to be filed to which section, as the names do match.
Having got to where you are now, your big concern is that “nothing is happening”.
The DSS says it acknowledges that some misunderstanding remain regarding timelines though it notes that the process includes a five-week “notice period” set down in legislation that it has no control over.
The DSS advised me that sheer pressure of work means it is taking around five months to get from the point of you filing your completed EPA application to having it registered, so it could be the end of May or even June before you get confirmation of that.
A spokesman for the DSS assures me five months is quite normal by international standards. I’ll take his word for that as I certainly have not checked comparative arrangements in other countries. It is certainly a lot longer than it used to take under the old system, which our family used in a previous generation.
That’s all the more reason for people not to leave things until the last minute. It does take time to think through what you want to do and then get all the relevant people registered with the DSS, all the documents filled out, downloaded, signed, uploaded and submitted even before you join the back of this five-month queue.
If a person’s situation deteriorates dramatically before registration is complete, the DSS says there is a process in place to expedite the registration and activation of an EPA.
The one element of your query that certainly alarmed the DSS was the notion that calls or emails would have gone unanswered. This, they tell me, should not happen and is, to them, extremely concerning. They are looking to see what, if anything, might have fallen through cracks on this occasion but insist that callers or those emailing should expect fairly prompt replies.
The office offers a freephone service at 01 2119750 or an email address at queries@decisionsupportservice.ie.
Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
*This article was amended on Thursday, March 12th, 2026
