Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford I understand exactly where the Senator is coming from. I want to acknowledge that lady who shared her lived experience and spoke about her 23 years in services and the challenges she had. I speak to a lot of people, too, who have had good experiences, and the Senator has acknowledged that, but we have come a long way over 23 years when we think of the Bill in 2001, which the current Taoiseach brought through the Houses. We have spoken about it many times and here I am now in 2026 with a Bill that started its journey through the Houses 17 months ago. There has been a huge amount of work in collaboration with the Department of justice and the Department of children. It is essential that when any person is receiving healthcare supports, whether for his or her mental or physical health, he or she should have access to supports he or she needs to make a complaint if they are not happy with his or her care. It is just a given that this has to happen. The Bill already strengthens the requirement that people receiving treatment in a registered acute mental health centre be given information in relation to the complaints procedure in the centre. That is true for either involuntary or voluntary detention. It might have been lost at times in the involuntary detention piece where people are not in a position to do that. In relation to the care plans we spoke about yesterday and the nominated person who can support people now in their care journey, that is really important. The 2006 approved centre regulations include a regulation related to complaints procedures. These regulations will be replaced under the new enactment, and I expect that significantly more detail in relation to complaints procedures will be included in the new regulations. As I said, I met yesterday with the patient advocacy service and got an idea of what is happening. There are 44 people currently working in patient advocacy services - not the national advocacy services, but in patient advocacy service. This information is impossible because it is happening the length and breadth of the country. The first question I asked was whether we have full geographical coverage, and we do. In order for them to ramp up into mental health services, however, there is a scoping exercise going on. It is not quite as straightforward as just going into an acute hospital setting when somebody has a mental disorder and is very clearly unwell with mental illness. There is scoping work going on there at the moment on how it would look for them. At the same time, I have asked them to move as quickly as possible. I want to compliment my special adviser, Ian, on all the work he has done in supporting me with this Stage of the Bill. He is going to engage with national advocacy services and the patient advocacy service next week to see how quickly we can stand it up. As I said, I am aware of all the governance that is available from the Mental Health Commission in our approved centres. However, I specifically want to focus immediately on the many people who are living in community houses the length and breadth of the country with enduring mental health conditions. That is the first part of the legislation I want to enact. They are probably very well looked after, but I do not know. I do not know what kind of premises they are living in. There is a lot of information that we do not know. All of the regional executive officers, REOs, are doing an audit across the entire country. In the main, I expect that these people are looked after extremely well because a lot of them have families. At the same time, however, they have to have access to make a complaint if they want to. The complaint could be that somebody might like to attend the men's shed for a half day a week and is not allowed to do it. It could be something as simple as that so that they can live the best life they possibly can. I am with the Senator 100% on this. I cannot tell her how much I am with her on this. That is why I had the meeting yesterday morning during a really busy day. It was so I can get a complete understanding of how quickly we can make this happen. I will keep the Senator informed on the progress in that regard. As I said, another meeting is going to happen next week. I have asked them to come back to me with guidelines as to how many staff they need, the cost and how fast they can ramp it up because it is not happening quick enough for me at the moment. In fairness, I want to thank Georgina from the patient advocacy services. She gave me a lot of information yesterday. She actually gave me an indication of the types of complaints that are being made. Complaints can be made in relation to the type of food a person is getting. A lot of complaints, believe it or not, are about how someone's own clothes might go to the laundry, and they might not get their own clothes back. There might be a mix of somebody else's. She went through the types of complaints. Sometimes, people might not have a good working relationship with the clinical lead on the team, for example. There are some complaints in relation to that. In the main, however, they are complaints we can work with and resolve. That is why I was happy to get a context of the types of complaints they get at the moment. They are in the disability sector and the nursing home sector. They are already seeing about 10% of those with mental health issues through the disability sector as well. I am very anxious to progress this. As I said, I have form here. I have done it across the nursing home sector, and I will certainly do it across this sector. I want to get it done as soon as I possibly can, however. It is really important. --- 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