Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford I will come to Senator Boyhan first. In response to his discussions on the conventions, co-ordination of the conventions is the responsibility of the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality. Any review of whether the conventions should be reflected in primary legislation must be led by that Department. That is something we know for a fact. The Senator spelled out that it is not incorporated into domestic law. That is quite stark. It is something of which people may not have been aware. Every effort has been made in the Mental Health Bill 2024, as amended by the Seanad, and it puts the best interests of the child forward at every single move. On admissions to adult units, everybody wants the same thing. The best interests of the child must always be the primary consideration. To be very clear, the Bill does not legislate for admissions to adult units. It does not state anywhere that a child should be admitted to an adult unit. There were two rare cases this year. It must be acknowledged that both cases involved the support of parents. The young person - a teenager or adolescent – is not put into award with adults. I have to be clear about that. They are put into an individual room with one-on-one support. There is a clinical person with them at all times, with the support of their parents. The fact is that we are not legislating for admissions to adult units. The Bill does not state that if a place is not available, a child will be put into an adult unit. I would not legislate for that. I do not want to see it happen. The Bill does not enshrine that practice anywhere in law. It is not there. However, as Senator O'Reilly said, in an emergency we cannot have a scenario arise whereby a child cannot access mental health services for myriad reasons. There have been two such cases this year. I have had many discussions on this. There were five admissions last year and I believe in 2020 the figure was 80 or 90. They are high numbers, which have come right down. We also know that the most appropriate place for a young person is an appropriate setting. There are inpatient units in Dublin, Cork and Galway. It is very difficult to have inpatient units for young people all over the country. People will never have that, no matter where they live. People will always have to travel. I recently visited the new mental health wing in the children's hospital and, please God, it will be open as soon as possible. It is fabulous. It was my first time there about three months ago. We hear a lot of negativity about the cost and the length of time but, my God, it is good to actually go and see it. It has 20 en suite rooms, parents rooms and classrooms. It is spectacular. It was 95% finished, to my eyes, and the furniture was in. It has been fitted out that far, although perhaps not from a clinical perspective. That will make a significant difference as well. Senator Black referred to 72 hours. I do not want to legislate to put a child into an adult facility because we do not want it to happen. I will tell the House of an interesting case I dealt with before I was the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health. This was probably in 2016 or 2017. A 16-year-old, with the support of his parents, did not want to move from the area he was in to Dublin, Galway or Cork. For a short time, he stayed as an inpatient, with the support of the parents and the clinicians. I do not wish to legislate for admission to adult units. That is what it would involve to put a 72-hour timeframe on it. I am afraid the numbers would go back up. In most cases, the length of stay is a maximum of 48 hours where it is justified. We use private capacity if needed. We buy private capacity to move a young person out of an adult ward. I get an update on the waiting lists for children's wards every week on a Tuesday morning. Our waiting lists are currently running at approximately one to two. We have been running under capacity nearly all of this year from an inpatient perspective. That is down to community supports having improved, especially in relation to eating disorders, and the new teams we have in place. I understand exactly where both sides are coming from. I understand exactly where everyone has spoken from. However, I am not in a position to accept amendment No. 36 a . --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-10