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

For me, that raises even more questions about the fact that when a young person is released from Oberstown, there is no care order that extends outside the walls of Oberstown. You are not under a care order, so Tusla does not have to have intervened in the relationship between a parent and a young person who ends up in Oberstown. Are we saying that there is a temporary care order in place while the young person is in Oberstown, and that then overrides the parental involvement in regard to involuntary care, when that parent was never subject to an actual investigation by or involvement with Tusla but it is by the mere fact they end up in Oberstown that their parental rights have been removed?
I am not sure, in all the years I have worked in the area of justice, prisons and Oberstown, and this is raising something else in me now where parents are unaware that they do not have parental rights, potentially, when their kids are in Oberstown. This is not just in relation to this Bill; I am looking at it in much broader terms now. Are we saying that when kids go into Oberstown, there is a temporary care order? Tusla does not necessarily follow up with families when a child is released from Oberstown. There is no actual follow up of care by Tusla but then it is given this role with a family which it has never had any interaction or any extended period of time with. That is concerning from the children's rights perspective as well in terms of who has a say in their care when it has not been a court proceeding that has removed the care from a parent. It is now a bit confusing for me in general who is responsible.

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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