Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

I thank the Senator. I compliment her on all the work she does in relation to mental health. We worked closely together in the previous Dáil and Seanad when she chaired the Sub-Committee on Mental Health. I did write at the time to support her when she was trying to keep that committee up and running. I thank her for all the work she does.
To move back to the point of the current Bill, the 2001 Act allows for 21 days. This is something I have discussed at length with both advocacy groups and the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland. There are several reasons I have decided to leave it at 21 days while putting in a caveat that it can be changed. One thing to remember is that after the initial review board hearing, if that was to happen at two weeks, for example, a review board will not be reconvened until an order is renewed. The Bill provides for orders to last up to three months. If it is mandated that all hearings take place before 14 days of admission, there is a risk that a person is still too unwell to properly engage with his or her legal representative and review board at that initial hearing and that he or she may not appear before a review board for another three months. That is a factor that I had to take on board. The current wording is that the Bill allows the Minister of the day, whoever that is, to reduce the number of days over time from 21 days to 14 days. I believe this strikes the right balance. We will go back to 21 days, which is three weeks in relation to it if we take the working week for example.
We found that in 2024, which is the year for which I have data available to me, there were 1,734 tribunals; 343 were held on day 20 and 139 were held on day 21. As I said, therefore, the majority of them are held between days 15 and 19. There is clear reasoning for permitting a review board to take place between 14 days and 21 days based on clinical presentation and that is what I factored my decision on. In the majority of cases, it takes two to three weeks after admission and the commencement of treatment before a person's condition improves. For a person to meaningfully engage with the review board or his or her legal representative, it would make sense to allow the person enough time for treatment to take effect. However, what I want to see happening is further engagement because every single case is different. Every single person who presents is different. Obviously, it is a review tribunal, so it is an involuntary detention. However, when the review board meets and the person is there with his or her legal representatives, I believe it is deliberate for those who are put forward on days 14, 15 or 16 because the clinicians who put that person forward for the review would feel that he or she would be better able to articulate his or her own reasoning in that case and those who may not have responded as quickly as others are pushed out towards days 19, 20 and 21. This is something we can keep under review. It will be written into the Bill as a statutory instrument for the Minister of the day to reduce it back. I am also conscious of the fact that those consultants and clinicians who attend the reviews also work in mental health services, community services, departments of psychiatry and approved centres. It is important that we are cognisant of that. It is not that somebody just works as part of the tribunal system. That has to be a factor as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09