Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-22 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford Amendments Nos. 129, 132, 136 and 138 are all smaller amendments. Amendments Nos. 131 and 139 are being inserted to provide clarity to the Government's existing policy. This policy is that capacity assessments should be carried out and completed in a timely fashion. There should never be a situation where a single capacity assessment is ongoing for weeks at a time. Amendment No. 139 inserts a new section 50(3) that requires that capacity assessments be completed within 72 hours of the initiation of any treatment. It also provides that any treatment should cease immediately when the person is found to have the capacity to consent or refuse treatment, unless the person consents. These are people who are already admitted who do not have capacity. I do not support Opposition amendment No. 130. This amendment seeks to provide for an application for a treatment order to the High Court where a person lacks capacity and lacks a substitute decision-maker. The amendment states that the High Court may only make a treatment order when a person meets all four criteria for treatment, encompassing both risk criteria and treatment criteria. In cases where a person lacks capacity and does not have a substitute decision-maker, the Bill already provides for a safe course via the court. The Bill provides for an application to be made to the Circuit Court to put in place a substitute decision-maker, so if the person does not have capacity, he or she will not be left without a decision-maker. If a decision-maker is not available, there will be a substitute decision-maker. I do not believe having a separate court process in these circumstances would be helpful. The criteria set out in amendment No. 130 are more limiting than the criteria for admission. If this amendment were to be accepted, a situation would arise where a person admitted on the grounds of risk or of treatment did not have capacity or a substitute decision-maker, and after the initial treatment period, an application would be made to the High Court. However, this would create a conflict in process, in that the High Court would be unable to direct treatment because the person did not meet both sets of criteria for risk and treatment. This discrepancy would mean that the person would not be able to be treated and would be left without any care pathway for his or her mental disorder. The person would either have to be discharged without receiving necessary treatment or be held without treatment in the centre until the Circuit Court made its determination. I made similar remarks regarding an earlier grouping, but I must once again state that the purpose of involuntary admission under the Bill is to provide treatment. It is for nothing else. It is to provide treatment to somebody who is extremely ill with a mental disorder and, as such, it would not arbitrarily detain these people without ensuring there was an effective treatment pathway. In cases where a person lacks capacity to consent to treatment, we need to make sure that he or she has access to treatment in a timely manner. I think I am up to 13.5 hours of being here in the Seanad and I rarely hear anyone speaking about recovery. The only person who is talking about recovery is me. Recovery is possible for someone who has a mental disorder. Recovery is possible for someone who has a mental illness. There is no clinician in a psychiatric facility detaining people just for the sake of it. Let us be fair here. We are under pressure for beds. We are not going to keep people in there just for the sake of it. We are trying to bring people in and to make sure that they get the proper, appropriate treatment, with their consent if possible, and if they cannot give consent, they will have an appropriate decision-maker to support them. When they retain capacity, they are able to make their own decisions about their own mental health. Please, can we have balance to this? We need balance regarding some of the amendments. We can talk about civil liberties and human rights all day long, but as Minister of State, I want people who are ill and have a mental disorder to be able to go into a facility where there are qualified clinicians, who have trained for many years and who do a difficult job to help these people to get better and to get home to their families and communities. A bit of common sense is being lost in some of these 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/2026-01-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-22