Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I will not go into great length because, in fairness, the Minister of State was very patient and we had a good debate. I certainly received a lot of feedback from the debate. People are not particularly happy. I suppose the word that we perhaps did not hear enough of was the "ambition" of the Government. The Minister of State explained to us all that, of course, it was an all-of-Government approach to the two UN conventions but it is important that we send out a clear message. I cannot put words into the Minister of State's mouth but we on this side of the House are ambitious to see it done. Clearly, that has to be a priority or we have to make it be a priority. We have to continue to get TDs to ask parliamentary questions - predominantly those in opposition because they are the Opposition. The Government could initiate this, but it will just have to come down to us here, with Commencement matters and motions, keeping the pressure on the Government to live up to its commitment. The State is a signatory, after all, to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the last few days, I have constantly taken calls from people saying that they are not happy. They do not see the comforts that the Minister of State talks about. They are coming from a particular focus of their own experience. I think we need to be ambitious. I appeal to the Minister of State, who has vast experience in this area. This overlaps much of the Minister of State's work in her Ministry. We see people going out there and strongly advocating for these two important conventions to be transposed into domestic law. I do not know what we are doing, quite frankly, that we have not done it. I did an analysis of a lot of Commencement matters here and business taken under the Order of Business, and the three issues that come up most are housing, hospitals and healthcare, and disability. From all sides of the House, they are the same issues. Some Senators might perhaps forget that they are in government, but there are the same issues about water leaking into schools, no school extensions, and problems in Limerick and lots of other hospitals. I am not singling out Limerick for the sake of my colleague here, Senator Maria Byrne, because she is a great advocate for Limerick and Limerick hospital, but they are the same issues. Mental health and the disability sector are huge in that top cohort of concerns for people. My appeal here today, in the broader appeal to the audience outside of this Chamber who are listening in and who are an important audience to our parliamentary processes and debates, is that we crank up the initiative and bring to bear some pressure on the Government so that these two conventions can be ratified. I am not expecting the Minister of State to reply. I merely want to share that with her because it is important. I really want to see ambition in this area so that we can align these with the Minister of State's legislation and with other legislation, as I know it goes over a wide field. The decision was taken to rule out amendments Nos. 39 and 40 in my name. I have to accept that. There are rules that guide our parliamentary processes. I want to touch on them. This is part of the section and they fall within that section. A note was provided to the Cathaoirleach in relation to those. I ask that they be read into the record again because we will have another opportunity for amendments on the next Stage of this Bill when we come back. However, section 39 was a guiding principle to apply in respect of children. I sought to delete the clause "in so far as is practicable". Children who are not in State care are very vulnerable and it touched on that. I asked to have that taken out but I was told there would be a cost to the Exchequer arising from that. We might as well render ourselves redundant and useless in here if everything we speak about is subject to that constraint, but I will talk about that later. My other amendment was also ruled out of order. It begs the question of what are we doing here at all, if everything has an implication on cost. I want to flag those amendments. I circulated those amendments to many advocacy groups. I explained and circulated the letter that was provided to me. However, it is important that people understand because we look back on these proceedings and the printouts, and it is important we understand it is not a failure on our part to advocate. It is a system that we have to operate within. I accept that but it is disappointing that these amendments were ruled out of order. There are other imaginative ways to address this and I have asked for the wording of these amendments to be recalibrated into other sections of this Bill which will be coming down the track. Under the processes, when we finish whatever section we will finish today, it will be open to us to submit other amendments. They were important amendments and I want to put that on the record. I ask the Cathaoirleach to read into the record the reasons set out in the note supplied to him in relation to the amendments. --- 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