Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-20
============================================================

Garret Ahearn (FG), Administrative Panel

I support the Minister of State in how she outlined her concerns. While I agree that there is a stigma attached to it, many organisations, including Shine and SeaChange, have done a lot of good work in trying to break that stigma in mental health. Most of the contributions on this amendment have been about the most vulnerable, and people who are suffering from mental health conditions are vulnerable. When the Minister of State speaks about the possibility of other people being vulnerable, we are talking about are children and babies in many respects. We read stories in the newspapers. I will not name anyone, but we know of situations where, unfortunately, as a result of other people's mental health issues, children, young people and babies have suffered. If an expert in the field states that an individual poses a threat to vulnerable babies or children in a family home or to members of an extended family, how could people be of the view that they thought that expert opinion should not be taken seriously and that the individual who has a condition should not be given help in a hospital on an involuntary basis?

---

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/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20