Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

I thank the Acting Chairperson for being in the Chair today. I understand the Senator's amendments have been ruled out of order but, as he said, that decision was not made by me or my officials. I received these amendments earlier this week and asked my officials to correspond with the Mental Health Commission for its view on them. While the Bill as presented states that the inspector will inspect every inpatient service at least once within the registration period, I understand the commission plans to inspect each service at least twice per registration period, of which I am fully supportive. I understand this also how the commission will inspect the community residences, that is, twice a year. I have already provided resources for more staff than ever before and when the Bill is enacted, more staff will have to be provided because they are 66 approved centres across the country at the moment, but when all 81 CAMHS teams are included in that, they will need a lot more support.
The commission plans to inspect each service at least twice per registration period. The current wording provides the right level of flexibility for the commission to prioritise its inspection resources and home in on services that have issues with compliance. I will not go into it but I will touch on it briefly. When I was made aware of the situation in Bloomfield along with my Department and my officials, within two hours of the commission being informed of the situation in Bloomfield it was on site. I could not ask for more than that. It was informed at 5 o'clock and was on site at 7 o'clock. The commission is still finalising the report, which I expect to receive very soon. I have full confidence in it from that perspective.
This also relates to something I did in relation to HIQA. Every nursing home is inspected at least once in a calendar year and 95% of all inspections are unannounced. Unannounced inspections are a significant part. I tried to write that into the HIQA legislation but I could not do so because the follow-up inspections would not normally be unannounced, given that inspectors want to meet individual people and, therefore, have to announce it. As a result, it could not be written into the legislation. A total of 95% inspections by HIQA are unannounced and the majority of inspections by the Mental Health Commission are unannounced. As far as I am concerned, the more unannounced inspections, the better.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29