Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford If a child has a mental illness or mental disorder, whether they are self-harming, suicidal or dealing with any of the myriad issues children face - in many cases, it could be emotional distress or bullying - due weight has to be given to their voice. It is important that the voice of the young child, young teenager or young person is heard. It is important their voice is included because you cannot just decide to treat a young person in a certain way. Parents sometimes do not agree with certain types of treatment. Let us take as an example a young transgender child, an issue on which I can speak with authority. There are times when a 14- or 15-year-old - they could be 15 and a half or 15 years and 11 months - might want to go down a specific pathway and they do not have the support of their parents or guardians. It is really important to give due weight to the voice of the child in that case and that their voice is heard in the notes in their file as well. I am really strong on that. It is very important. I thank Senator Black for all the work she does in this area. I did that during the previous session too but it is important to acknowledge the Senator's work. We had a stand-alone Oireachtas committee on mental health. I would love to see it back up and running, even if it was only for two years. It might be important to have it up and running to tease out various issues while we enact the Bill. I would certainly support that. I may speak to the Senator in the new year to see if we can get that committee up and running. To respond to Senator Boyhan, we have robust protections in place in the Bill to ensure treatment can be given to a child when he or she needs it. As I previously mentioned, if a child, or a parent or guardian on behalf of the child, refuses consent, an application can be made to the High Court to seek a treatment order. The order will be made in cases where the treatment is necessary to protect the health or life of the child from immediate and serious harm and where it is in the child’s best interest. The Senator spoke about Tusla. We have 12,000 people working across mental health through the HSE every day of the week. We also have a large number of whole-time equivalent staff working in Tusla. I believe, as I know the Senator believes, everybody who goes into work every day does so with the best of intentions to support young people and adults through what can be a very difficult journey. The 16- and 17-year-olds who do not have capacity and are not in a position to consent are a very small cohort of young people but a very important one. That is why we have spent so much time trying to make this part of the Bill as strong as possible. I welcome all the Senators' support. It is much appreciated. --- 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/2025-12-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-17