Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17
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Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel

They are very broad, both in the day patient sector and the private sector. Therefore, we are not comparing like with like. All these services have to be subject to probity, and I am not suggesting they are not. This is primary legislation for mental health and all of them are subject to it. The situation is an evolving one and, as the Minister of State said, her figures are for up to October. We do not know what will happen next year. There are a lot of challenging issues. We see in our schools that guidance counsellors have a lot of young people presenting with very serious, complex mental health issues that need a variety of interventions.
We have to be very careful about bandying around numbers. Across the board, in the public and private sector, we do not actually have the statistics today on the number of people involved. The position is always changing. In an ideal world, there would be nobody affected but we do not live in an ideal world. There are always challenges. One never knows what is coming down the road at any of us within weeks or months. That is an important point.
I was hoping we could come to some arrangement and set out the ambition in legislation that no child would be in a public or a private service with adults. I do not draw a distinction between public or private once the service is doing what is meant to be doing and there are proper governance controls in place, which I suggest there are. In an ideal world, we do not want any children in psychiatric services, particularly residential psychiatric services, with adults. It is not appropriate. Best practice tells us it is not good. Advocates say it is not good. The people involved who had experiences have not had good experiences. That is my ambition for this area.

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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