Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10
============================================================

Teresa Costello (FF), Agricultural Panel

I have been listening to the debate and can see where Members are coming from. As a parent, if my child was in an emergency situation, I would want them in any unit that would be able to help them in that emergency moment. I understand where people are coming from. However, could I honestly live with myself if a child did not get emergency care because of something we legislated for here? I do not think so. Would it sit right with us, after this goes through, if a situation arose and a child was not able to be facilitated in an adult unit in an emergency situation? How would we feel about that? That is what I am asking myself when I am sitting here listening to everybody.
I know everybody is coming at it from a place where they care, and I feel the empathy around the room from everybody. We want to get it right. It is really good that we are having such a lengthy debate on it because it really matters. As a mother, as I am listening, I am thinking that if it was my child, I would work with them, as the Minister of State said about those two cases. I am sure that for those parents, it was not a nice situation to be in, but they worked, and they agreed to that because it was in the best interests of their child. To have that option removed would not sit easily with me.

---

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