Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28
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Frances Black (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I want clarity on amendment No. 243, just for my own understanding. Amendment No. 243 covers the bringing of a child subject to an involuntary admission order to an acute mental health centre by gardaí. Will any safeguards, training or guidance be made available to ensure Garda involvement is used only as a last resort? It should be trauma-informed to minimise distress. The reason I say this is that a few years ago, when I was on the mental health committee, I had a meeting with a young man who was having a really bad episode. He was in a bad way in the sense that he was lashing out. The gardaí were not really informed as to what was going on. They just thought he was having a mental health episode. He was treated absolutely horrifically on one occasion. On another, he was treated with wonderful empathy and understanding by the gardaí. I need clarification on this as well. On the occasion that the individual was treated badly, the garda was not trained to deal with somebody having a mental health episode and was therefore very aggressive. The young man was retraumatised. He was involved with an organisation whose name I cannot remember. It was a really bad scenario for him and he went into a very dark place. Is there any oversight or review that could be conducted in such cases to ensure everything was done properly and to ensure continuous learning from the Garda’s point of view? That is really important.
Amendment No. 238 does not explicitly reference the child’s right to be heard or to have legal representation during proceedings. Can the Minister of State provide more information on how these rights are protected? Can assurance be given that these points are covered elsewhere in the Bill? While the amendment states the executive must furnish psychiatric reports, there is no real mention of an independent review, access by the child or his or her representatives or an opportunity to challenge the findings of the reports. All of these are essential for procedural fairness. Could we be given some clarity on that?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-28