Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I endorse everything Senator Ryan said. I will comment briefly on gaps in supports. A very high threshold is required when people are being denied their liberty and detained involuntarily. I have sat on Mental Health Commission tribunals for more than a decade and have attended hundreds of tribunals where people were involuntarily detained. One of the recurring themes that arose at those tribunals was the lack of proper supports and care in the community and that, in many cases, when people found themselves in extremis , it was because of a lack of investment in mental health supports and services and their underfunding.
As a percentage of the overall HSE budget compared with the 1970s and 1980s, mental health provision is a fraction of what it used to be. The multidisciplinary teams of psychiatrists, psychiatric nursing staff and social workers are hugely under-resourced and understaffed. In many cases, executive clinical directors, ECDs, are asking consultant psychiatrists to engage in dangerous practices in order to paper over some of the shortcomings in the funding of the service. It is in that context that I say this section should be included in the legislation to strengthen and reinforce the rights of people, particularly disabled citizens, who are so poorly treated in this State, and all the other categories of persons contained within its provisions in terms of the lack of supports available to them in the community.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20