Mental Health Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-29 ============================================================ Mary Butler (FF), Waterford We hope the President will sign the Bill over the Easter period. That is our plan and timeline at the moment. They will move immediately then. For all the secondary legislation we are looking at a period of between 12 and 18 months. Other issues can run in parallel to that. Some of them will be statutory instruments that I will simply sign and that will not have to come before the Houses. They will be laid before the Houses but they will not have to be discussed in the Houses. As the Senators are aware, I am open to coming in to discuss anything at any time, even if it is only statements to provide an update. I will come in and do that. My point is there is no reason why other things cannot happen in parallel. The patient advocacy services part is the one I want to get done first. --- 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