Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Nicole Ryan (SF), Administrative Panel This amendment relates to one of the most important areas of mental health, which is the disconnect between legislation, service demand and the actual resources required to deliver safe care. We heard from different organisations on CAMHS and CAMHS services at this morning health committee meeting. I am sure the Minister of State has heard pieces herself. One thing they did not dispute was that there is legislation there. There are plans. That is all well and good. It is the implementation that is taking a long time. We all recognise that implementation does take a lot of time. The problem is that families are not seeing the implementation fast enough for some of their children. They fall through the cracks. When we look at the Bill, it sets out an ambitious reform agenda. That is down to the Minister of State. However, when we have ambition without workforce planning, it is not reform because we cannot legislate for new rights, services and clinical models without also legislating for how many clinicians are required, how much funding is needed and how long it will take to implement it. This amendment ensures the Minister of State will report progress towards extending CAMHS into a full CYMHS model up to the age of 25, the development of a youth mental health clinical speciality, the number of whole-time equivalent clinicians required to safely staff services and the amount of new additional funding needed to deliver timely access to care. If we do not have this information, we legislate in the dark. Every Member of this House knows the reality of CAMHS. We hear it all the time. The transition from CAMHS to adult services is one of the most dangerous gaps in our mental health system. Young people do not suddenly become emotionally stable at the age of 18. Their vulnerability does not end on that birthday. That is why international best practice is moving towards a CYMHS model up to the age of 25. This amendment ensures the extension of CAMHS into a CYMHS model. It is not just talked about, but properly planned, costed and delivered. As the Minister of State knows best, young people have distinct clinical needs. This amendment requires the Minister of State to report on the development of youth mental health clinical speciality. It is something that clinicians, academics and service users have called for. Amendment No. 312 is about the rights of the service users and their families to raise concerns and to know those concerns will be heard, investigated and acted upon independently. We briefly touched on this throughout the debate. We feel that this is a necessary safeguard. Without a credible complaints system, rights only exist on paper. We ask people at their most vulnerable to trust the mental health services with their liberty, autonomy, dignity and sometimes even their lives. The trust must be earned, but it also has to be protected. Yet we know from service users, families, advocates and clinicians that the complaints processes are often confusing, inaccessible, slow, poorly communicated or not available at all. Many people simply do not complain because they fear repercussions or because the process feels intimidating and futile. That is really not acceptable in a healthcare system, particularly in one that has coercive powers. Complaints are not a problem to be managed; they are really an early warning system for us. They tell us that patients feel unsafe and where dignity has been compromised. The amendment places the responsibility on the Mental Health Commission, the statutory regulator for mental health services. It requires it to examine the quality of the existing complaints process, to assess its independence and make recommendations to strengthen that. That is exactly where this work belongs. We need a national independent assessment of how complaints are handled across the system. The 12-month timeframe is deliberate. It ensures that there is no drift and that it is prioritised. If we are modernising mental health law, we must modernise accountability at the same time. Public trust depends on accountability. The legitimacy of any mental health system depends on public trust. When people believe their voices will be ignored, they disengage. When families fell powerless, trauma deepens and when staff have no safe way of raising concerns, that risk escalates. A strong independent complaints system is for everyone and this amendment just legislates for 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