Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-10
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Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel

At this stage, I am conscious that we need to move on. The Minister of State has stated her position. I have stated mine. However, it has been a wake-up call. As I say, my takeaway is that both of these conventions have not been worked into domestic law.
I am already drafting in my head Private Members' business that I will table. I will engage constructively with Ministers, as I always do. Clearly this is something I will certainly be writing to the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste about in the next few days. I will also write to the various mental health spokespersons in the parties. We have a strong line in the Opposition in the Seanad on it.
We are legislators. We are mature and big enough people, and we will talk, laugh and engage after this debate. I have no doubt our paths will cross. The challenge the Minister of State has put up to us is that there is concern about the ratification in domestic law. This is my takeaway from this. Am I sorry that I pursued this line of engagement? No, because from this engagement I am going away having learned more from the Minister of State on certain segments of it. I am now more determined than ever that this needs to be highlighted at the highest level possible. There are challenges for us but this is what parliamentarians do. They have to be pragmatists, they have to meet, they have to engage and they have to see whether there are other opportunities for legislation.
I have no doubt this is something that is not going to go away. I have no doubt the media will pick up on this. I urge the advocacy groups looking in here to rigorously and robustly pursue it. I will certainly make contact with the Ombudsman for Children tomorrow and see what his views are on it. There are challenges for us all and we may have been going along with our eyes slightly blinded or closed but surely this is an issue of significant importance. The best way to test it and pursue it is through some sort of Private Members' motion or Bill and we should work to do this. We have had an important debate and we have learned from it.

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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