Managing health records for your family in Ireland: children, ageing parents and carers

In most families, one person ends up holding everyone’s health history in their head. Whether the dose changed. Whether Mam’s cardiologist knows about the tablet the GP started last month. Often that person is doing it for their children and their own parents at once, from memory.

There is one thing nobody tells you until the moment you need it, and it is why this gets hard: caring for someone does not give you a right to see their health records. Responsibility and authority are separate, and they come apart at the wrong moments. Here is how access works in Ireland, and what to arrange early.

Disclosure

I am a doctor, and I founded exora, which is a personal health record app that can hold records for several people in one account. It appears near the end. Everything before that applies whatever you use.

Three situations, three different answers

Most readers are in one of three positions:

• Your own children. You start with authority as their guardian, and it narrows as they grow up.
• A parent or partner who can still make their own decisions. Easy to arrange, needs their agreement, and almost nobody does it in advance.
• Someone who can no longer make their own decisions. Much harder, and it turns on arrangements under the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act that you either set up in time or have to apply to a court for.

Your children: guardianship, then their own say

The starting point is guardianship, not simply being a parent. The Data Protection Commission puts it plainly: most parents are legal guardians, but not all are, and “it is the legal guardianship status that provides adults with the right to make decisions in relation to the child” (DPC guidance on children, parents and data protection).

A mother is a guardian automatically. A father married to the mother is too. An unmarried father, or a second parent, becomes a guardian automatically if he or she has lived with the mother for at least 12 consecutive months, including at least three months with the child after the birth. Otherwise, the parents can make a statutory declaration together (Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, section 6B), or the parent can apply to court to be appointed (section 6A). A step-parent is not automatically a guardian.

What a guardian can ask for

Under data protection law, a guardian can usually ask for a child’s records on the child’s behalf. The DPC says there is “a rebuttable presumption that a parent/guardian is acting in the best interests of their child unless there is evidence to the contrary”. But it also says something parents are often surprised by: a child’s personal data “is and remains, the personal data of their child”, and parents “do not have an automatic entitlement to that personal data”.

The DPC lists what an organisation should weigh first, including how close the child is to 18, whether the information was shared in confidence, as in counselling, any court orders about custody or access, and whether the child agrees.

For the HSE and voluntary hospitals there is also Freedom of Information. A parent or guardian can request the records of a child under 18, and access is granted where it is in the child’s best interests (Freedom of Information Act 2014 (Section 37(8)) Regulations 2016). Our Ireland records guide covers how to make either kind of request.

Why it changes as they get older

No Irish law sets a single age at which a child takes over their own records. The DPC says “there is no law in Ireland setting out the age at which children can exercise their own legal rights”, and that a child may exercise their data protection rights once they have the capacity to and it is in their best interests.

Treatment is different, and here there is an age. Under section 23 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, a young person of 16 or over can consent to surgical, medical or dental treatment as if they were an adult, and when they do, consent from a parent or guardian is not needed. That section is about treatment, not records, but it shapes how a 16-year-old’s GP visit works.

You may also have heard “16” as the digital age of consent. That is real, but narrow: section 31 of the Data Protection Act 2018 sets 16 as the age for consenting to online services, and excludes preventative or counselling services. It does not decide who can see a child’s medical records.

One more practical point. The HSE Health App is for people aged 16 or older, and you will only see your own cards in it. Managing health information for children and people you care for is on the HSE’s list of things it is working on next, not something it does today. I compared the app with a personal record here.

This is a good system. Teenagers need to be able to see a GP about contraception, mental health or drink and drugs and know the conversation is theirs.

So the practical advice is a conversation: your health record is becoming yours, and I would still like to help with appointments and prescriptions if you are happy for me to. Most teenagers say yes when asked. Fewer do when they find out you have been looking.

A parent or partner who can still make their own decisions

This is the most common situation. If your mother is perfectly capable and wants help with appointments and medicines, you need no legal authority. She asks for you.

For records, she can authorise you in writing. The HSE’s page on data protection requests says that if you apply for someone else, “you need to provide written consent from the person - such as a signed letter” (HSE: data protection requests). A GP practice or private hospital will usually want the same. She can also simply tell her GP and consultants that you are involved, and bring you to appointments.

The thing worth taking away is the timing. Set this up on an ordinary Tuesday, not during a hospital admission. The paperwork is not the hard part; the conversation is, and it is much easier over a cup of tea than in a hospital corridor.

If she finds some decisions hard on her own but can still make them with help, the law has a formal option for that too. A decision-making assistance agreement lets her appoint someone she trusts to help. Under the Act, the assistant’s role includes helping her “to obtain the appointer’s relevant information” and explaining it, while the decision stays hers (Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, section 14). A co-decision-making agreement goes further: the decision is made jointly.

Someone who can no longer make their own decisions

This is where it gets genuinely complicated. Since 26 April 2023, the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, as amended in 2022, has set the framework, and the Decision Support Service, part of the Mental Health Commission, registers and supervises the arrangements.

Enduring power of attorney

An enduring power of attorney (EPA) lets an adult appoint someone they trust to act for them if they lose capacity to make certain decisions in the future. It can cover property and affairs, personal welfare, or both, and personal welfare includes healthcare (section 59; section 2). Four things about it are often missed:

• It has to be registered with the Decision Support Service first. There is a statutory five-week objection period, and the DSS publishes its current processing times; in November 2026 it was reviewing applications submitted in September.
• It does nothing while the person can decide. It only comes into force once the donor lacks capacity for a decision it covers and the attorney has notified the DSS, with statements from two healthcare professionals, and the DSS has accepted the notification. The DSS says the notification fee is €90.
• An attorney cannot consent to or refuse treatment. The 2022 amendments added this in plain words: a personal welfare power “shall not authorise the attorney to consent to or refuse treatment for the donor” (section 59(5A)). Wishes about treatment belong in an advance healthcare directive, below.
• Information is for the decision, not the whole file. The Act’s guiding principles say anyone acting under it “shall not attempt to obtain relevant information that is not reasonably required for making a relevant decision”, must keep it secure, and must dispose of it safely when it is no longer needed (section 8(10)).

Advance healthcare directive

An advance healthcare directive lets you write down your wishes about healthcare and medical treatment in case you cannot make those decisions later. You can name a designated healthcare representative, someone you trust whose job is to make sure the directive is followed. If what worries you is treatment decisions, this is the document to talk about, not only an EPA.

A decision-making representative appointed by the court

If someone has lost capacity without making any of these arrangements, a family member can apply to court. Where the person cannot make a decision even with support, the court can appoint a decision-making representative to make specified decisions on their behalf, about personal welfare, property and affairs, or both, “taking your wishes into account”, as the DSS puts it (section 38). It is a much harder road than an EPA made in time.

For a real situation, the Decision Support Service has a freephone helpline, and a solicitor can advise on the documents.

The single most useful line in this article: arrange this while it is hypothetical. The difference between a family that has an EPA and one that does not shows within an hour of an unexpected admission.

After someone has died

Data protection law covers the living. For the HSE and voluntary hospitals, Freedom of Information is the route: the executor or administrator can request the records, and so can a spouse, civil partner or cohabiting partner or next of kin, where the body decides release is in the public interest (same Regulations). For private care, ask the provider. Our records guide has the detail.

Being a carer without the paperwork

The hardest position is responsibility without authority: a friend, an unmarried partner, one of several adult children who disagree. What helps:

• Get named while you can. The person you care for can sign a letter of authority, and tell their GP and consultants you are involved. Easy while they are well.
• Keep your own notes. A diary, copies of documents you are given, and a current medication list. It is what clinicians want when they ask “what is she taking?”
• Ask for copies at the time. A discharge summary is far easier to get on the day than later.

What actually helps day to day

What makes a Tuesday easier is smaller:

• A current medication list for each person. Names, doses, prescriber, when it changed. The most useful document in family care, and almost always out of date.
• A one-page summary for each person. Conditions, allergies, key history, current GP and consultants. What you would hand someone in the emergency department.

Note where the official layer stops. Ireland has no national patient record yet, and the HSE app shows only your own information. Nothing official assembles a family’s hospital letters, private reports and older paperwork.

Where exora fits

exora is built for this shape of problem: one account, a separate profile for each person, such as yourself, a child and a parent you care for, and each profile holding its own health record. You upload the documents you have for each person, such as PDFs, photos or scans of the discharge summary, the consultant’s letter or the lab results, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. It pulls out the clinical details and builds one searchable record with a timeline for each person. Every fact links back to the document it came from, so you can check it. You can share a chosen part of one person’s record by link, with a co-parent, a sibling or a clinician, with an expiry, and revoke it at any time. Your health data is never used to train AI models. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.

Where it does not help, plainly:

• It is not legal access. Creating a profile for your mother does not give you any right to her records, and exora does not check guardianship or an EPA. Access comes from the routes above, and nothing in software replaces them.
• You still need their agreement. Managing an adult’s health information without their knowledge is a problem no product should solve, and this one does not.
• No HSE connection. exora has no link to the HSE Health App, MyGovID, any GP system or any HSE service. You request records and upload them yourself. It cannot get documents you do not have.
• Your data is stored in Sydney, Australia. That is outside the EU. exora has no HSE approval or Irish health-data certification. How we handle data is on our security page; read it before you upload anything, especially for someone else.
• It can misread. The reading is automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why every fact links back to it.
• It is not medical advice. It organises information. It does not diagnose or tell you what to do.

If a parent’s records are in another language, see getting medical records translated in Ireland.

A short checklist

1. Children: check you are a legal guardian. If you are not married to the other parent, check whether you became one automatically, or make the joint statutory declaration.
2. Teenagers: have the conversation before you need it. From 16 they can consent to their own treatment, and their records are increasingly theirs.
3. Capable adults you help: ask them for a signed letter of authority now, and to tell their GP and consultants you are involved.
4. Anyone ageing: make and register an enduring power of attorney, and think about an advance healthcare directive, while it is hypothetical.
5. Everyone: keep a medication list and a one-page summary for each person. If you do nothing else on this list, do this.

Sources

• Data Protection Commission: children, parents and data protection (guardianship, no age set in law, best interests factors)
• Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, section 6B (who is a guardian)
• Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, section 23 (consent to treatment at 16)
• Data Protection Act 2018, section 31 (digital age of consent)
• Freedom of Information Act 2014 (Section 37(8)) Regulations 2016 (children’s and deceased persons’ records)
• HSE: data protection requests (written consent when applying for someone else)
• HSE: about your HSE Health App and what the app does now
• Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, revised: section 2, section 8, section 14, section 38 and section 59
• Decision Support Service: enduring power of attorney, registered EPAs and notification, advance healthcare directives, decision-making assistance agreements and decision-making representation orders

Claims about guardianship, consent, access to records and the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act are sourced to the legislation, the Data Protection Commission, the HSE and the Decision Support Service, linked inline, and were checked on 9 November 2026. Providers apply these rules case by case, so check with yours. This article is general information, not legal or medical advice. Capacity law turns on the documents in place and the facts of each case; for a real situation, contact the Decision Support Service or a solicitor.