Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

I wish to clarify because this is an amendment of which I am unsure. Like the Minister of State said, people present differently and every situation is different. What concerns come up for me in relation to this is that sometimes those who are more vulnerable are maybe not as articulate as others. Often in psychiatric services, somebody who is extremely well educated is able to advocate on behalf of himself or herself even if he or she is being involuntarily admitted. Often, people can advocate for themselves in a way that those who are maybe less used to that space or have less of a vocabulary around rights, education, advocacy or health cannot. Those people can often be held involuntarily for much longer in some cases, especially in homeless services, which I went back to work in during Covid when this Chamber was shut, where the situation was still the same. I remember one service having to do so much work when there was a weather warning to try to get people on the streets safe. Some of them had severe psychiatric needs and they had to go to great efforts to actually be able to bring them into safety during weather warnings and so forth. In my mind, the three weeks is needed for some of those cases. Did the Minister of State say the consultant can make a determination at 14-plus days as to whether somebody can be brought before the review board earlier? Can the consultant make the decision to bring someone before the review board at an earlier point?

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09