Mental Health Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16
============================================================

Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

This grouping is exclusively related to minor changes to amendments in section 2 of the Bill. For example, all of the amendments that are currently in section 60 of the Bill are being moved to section 2. Another amendment is moving the definition of "involuntary admission order" slightly further down the same page to ensure that all definitions are in alphabetical order. The definition of "child" has been reworded by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to better align with wording in other relevant Acts. The meaning of the definition has not been changed but has been reworded.
All of the amendments in this grouping arose from further readings of the Bill by legal professionals in the Attorney General's office and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, as well as by officials in my office. These amendments are minor in nature and do not represent any policy changes to the Bill. I am letting Senators know that these amendments are minor in nature and do not represent any policy changes to the Bill. They came about after legal professionals in the Attorney General's office and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, as well as officials in my Department, reread the Bill to ensure that such a very large Bill, with 220 sections, reads correctly and that there are no typographical errors.

---

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/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16