Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford I will do my best to answer some of the Members' questions. I thank them for raising them. Amendments Nos. 264 to 268, inclusive, and Nos. 271 and 273 are being discussed together. Amendment No. 264 provides for a new section 77 of the Bill, which sets out that where the parents of a child to be admitted voluntarily, or their guardian, or Tusla, as appropriate, are unable to bring the child to the registered acute mental health centre for admission, they can request the assistance of the centre to arrange for the transfer. They are being admitted voluntarily, so they are not under an order or anything. This would be very unlikely, to be fair. The centre is the approved centre. We have four approved centres in Ireland in relation to younger people. I assume, when the new children's hospital opens, we will have to amend the Bill to include that. Amendment No. 265 provides for a new section 78 in relation to the transfer of an involuntarily admitted child where they need treatment in hospital or facility other than the registered acute mental health centre. Take a child who is currently involuntarily detained in an adult facility and who is going to be transferred to another centre. That is what this is allowing for. Where the child needs treatment other than in the "registered acute mental health centre", that refers to the other place we are talking about. It will never be outside the State. That is my understanding. To answer the Senator's question, I stand open to correction but I think I am right on this and we have spoken a lot about this. I refer to Dr. Amir Niazi again because he gives me so much advice and support. He is the clinical lead for all the clinical programmes for under-18s. Since the model of care was introduced in 2018 for eating disorders, no child has had to be treated outside the State. We all know that there is a treatment abroad scheme that can be accessed for adults, for example. They could be treated abroad, but it may not be in relation to their mental health. You could have a situation in relation to that. When we talk about service providers, these are trained operators. For example, a lot of people live in community residences all over the country. During mental health conditions, these residences will be regulated because of this Bill, which is one of the first pieces I am going to move to do. These are in the care of the HSE. Sometimes the HSE outsources. Nua Healthcare, for example, is one of the providers. The HSE, as it says to me, is not a landlord but it does have some houses and it leases some houses. I met patient advocacy services this morning. Senator Black will be interested in this. We spoke about national advocacy services and patient advocacy services. Sometimes people who are under the care of disability services have mental health issues as well. They are able to access patient advocacy services at the moment - about 10% of people with mental health issues. It was great to be able to have that discussion today. Service providers are trained operators. Nua Healthcare provides a lot of supports for people with disabilities, as we know, who need one-on-one support. There are also cases where we have some service providers in relation to mental health. I have heard a lot of talk about Kyrie Farm, for example. That is a private provider per se . That is what I am talking about. In relation to another place, it will not be outside the State. The intention is for children to be transferred to an accident and emergency department or somewhere in the State if they require treatment. It is just so that there will be no doubt in relation to what should happen in a case of a child involuntarily detained in the care of Tusla or the State and, if there was nobody to bring that child to another facility, what the facility is. The facility will always be determined by a clinician to find the best appropriate setting for the child to be looked after. I hope that answers the Senators' questions. I did not quite get them all. If they want to come back to me, they may. --- 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/2026-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-28