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

Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

There was extensive debate on the topic of advocacy during Committee Stage on a number of amendments over a number of hours. Following those debates, as well as the amendment tabled by Senator Frances Black, I am introducing a number of amendments relating to information on advocacy supports. These amendments will ensure that any person admitted under the new Act will be given information relating to any available advocacy supports. This will apply to children and adults, ensuring that information and advocacy supports will be available regardless of a person’s age. Importantly, this information will be given to people where they have been involuntarily admitted or where they are seeking treatment on a voluntary basis. Just because a person has chosen to admit themselves to voluntary treatment does not mean that they will not require some supports.
These amendments build upon the amendment tabled by Senator Black on Committee Stage by extending access to information and advocacy supports to all people admitted to inpatient mental health settings. This was the commitment I gave to the Senator in January, I think. Advocacy is not provided for in any primary legislation, including that concerning older people and disability services. However, advocacy services are now available in those types of services. Officials in my Department will shortly begin preparations to draft all the necessary regulations to underpin the operation of the new Act. I have asked them to examine how access to advocacy can be incorporated into these regulations.
Since Committee Stage concluded, I have met the patient advocacy service, and my team subsequently met the patient advocacy service again and the national advocacy service. I do have form in this area. When I was the Minister of State with special responsibility for older people, I introduced the national advocacy service to every nursing home in Ireland, public, private and voluntary. We have started to extend this into mental health services, and I will continue to do that. I give that commitment here.
As I said, the national advocacy service for people with disabilities already provides support to people who use mental health services, most commonly in relation to housing, social protection or other entitlements. There is also a programme for Government commitment to extend the patient advocacy service to support those accessing public mental health services. For the record, I wrote that into the programme for Government. The patient advocacy service is an independent, free and confidential service that can provide support to people who wish to make a complaint about the care they or a family member have received in a public acute hospital or in a public or private nursing home. Support is also provided in the aftermath of a patient safety incident.
I cannot support amendments Nos. 38 or 41. I have asked the patient advocacy service to accelerate its work and to expand into mental health settings as soon as possible. I also give a commitment that it will be funded in next year’s budget.

---

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