Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford I have a couple of points. The term "other places" is used in the 2001 Act and there have not been any unintended consequences since then. It is also used in the 2024 Bill regarding adults, so we just kept the same language going. A registered acute mental health centre is defined in the Bill as only an inpatient service registered by the commission. By definition, it cannot be a transfer to somewhere that is not registered by the commission; that just cannot happen. As I said, any transfer would be for the purpose of giving the child treatment that is not available in the mental health service. I am here moving a Bill regarding services provided by the HSE. I have told the Senator the HSE has not referred a child under 18 since 2018, when the model of care came in for eating disorders. I cannot tell him whether a family has chosen to bring their child to some place privately, so if we were to legislate that no child would be treated abroad, I could not do it for that reason. Not everybody chooses to use the HSE for their health services. Some people choose private healthcare or choose to go down a different route. I could not close that off. We spoke about ECT last week. ECT has not been administered to any child here in the past ten years, for example. There is no consultant psychiatrist or CAMHS consultant who is qualified to actually do it. I will take a look at it. I am going to take it away and have a look at it between now and tomorrow as regards other places, and maybe we will see if it can be strengthened. I looked for the definition there and I could not find it quickly. For me to be happy, I will take it away and look at it. I thank the Senator for raising it. The definitions are there for a registered acute mental health centre. I know everybody wants to make sure there is no unintended consequences, and I appreciate that. I will take it away and I will be back tomorrow. I will look at it, and if it needs to be changed on Report Stage, I will do that. --- 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