Adults with intellectual disability are being barred from opening Special Savings Incentive Accounts (SSIAs) because of a gap in the law, disability rights campaigners heard at a weekend conference.
The conference, hosted by the National Association of the Mentally Handicapped in Ireland (NAMHI), was also told incomplete legislation left a wide range of other rights - including access to medical treatment - unprotected for adults intellectually incapable of leading an independent life.
NAMHI has called for new laws to safeguard those rights and to provide protection for carers who are currently making decisions for mentally handicapped adults without legal authority.
Speakers at the conference, which was attended by more than 300 parents, carers and professional service providers, said there were serious concerns over the current position where a parent or carer could not legally make decisions on behalf of a mentally handicapped person over the age of 18 unless they were made a ward of court.
The ward of court procedure was "complex, time-consuming and expensive" and was impractical for dealing with everyday situations, such as where a person over 18 needed a tooth extraction or a blood transfusion but could not give informed consent to the procedure.
Out of necessity, parents, carers and medical professionals made such decisions on behalf of the intellectually disabled all the time but they did not have legal protection if a difficulty arose.
Solicitor and NAMHI member, Ms Máirín McCartney, said banks had refused to open SSIA accounts because an intellectually disabled person could not give informed consent and their parent or carer could not consent on their behalf because they were over 18.
The association's general secretary, Ms Deirdre Carroll, said it was preparing a submission for the Law Reform Commission on extending the parent or carer's legal role as guardian beyond the age of 18 for intellectually disabled people.