Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford Most of the amendments in this grouping relate to Government amendments and are being introduced to correct section references or typographical errors. For example, amendment No. 320 changes the section reference from section 128 to section 152, as section 152 is the appropriate section for conditions to be attached under. A lot of tidying up is going on in the Bill now because we have had so many amendments. Amendment No. 325 is necessary following amendments to Part 3, Chapter 3 to reflect the role of the registered proprietor of a service in being responsible for making applications to the Circuit Court in certain circumstances. I do not support Opposition amendment No. 336, tabled by Senator Black, because I do not believe it is appropriate to primary legislation. Furthermore, I do not believe that a review of complaints procedures should take place after the commencement of this Bill. If such a review is required, it should take place before the commencement of the Bill. As soon as we are finished here on the Bill, my team in the Department will move to the enactment stage. Review and a complaints mechanism will all be looked at. I give the Senator a guarantee on that. The HSE is currently looking at Your Service, Your Say in relation to a complaints mechanism because we all have had queries in relation to it and how it works. Again, the intention is not to write it into primary legislation but to deal with it by means of secondary legislation. I think a complaints procedure is really important. As I said, I met patient advocacy services yesterday morning with Georgina. We are moving very quickly to commence patient advocacy services. We will commence as soon as the Bill is enacted. I want to start with community residences because this is an area that has not governance whereas approved centres have a huge amount of governance already under the Mental Health Commission. I want to get that done as quickly as possible. Part of the work will be examining the existing complaints structures and reviewing how best to regulate complaints structures in mental health services. As the Bill progresses towards enactment, work has commenced in my Department to look at creating a programme of work ahead of commencement. All existing regulations, including the regulation on complaints procedures, will be examined in due course prior to commencement. I am happy to engage with the Senator on that and to engage with any of the Senators who have concerns in relation to parts that will not be in primary legislation. My door will be open. I just wanted to put that on the record. --- 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/2026-01-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-29