Mental Health Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland Along with Senator Black from my group and others, I am happy to be supporting both of these amendments. As regards the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Minister of State spoke about, it is not only this convention but also in this State, we had a referendum on the rights of a child just a short decade or so ago in which we tried to enshrine that into the Constitution. There is a fundamental thing that should flow from this, whereby we cement the rights of the child and I recognise the efforts throughout the Bill on this, even just in terms of what the Minister of State was saying earlier. She mentioned the nominated individuals and it is absolutely a step forward, and I acknowledge that. However, not everybody has somebody appropriate or has access to an individual who can be nominated on their behalf. That is not just everybody in the care system, but also in a family there may not be somebody who has that capacity. That is where the independent advocacy piece is different. It is something more. The youth advocacy programme the Minister of State mentioned is a great kind of programme which families are benefiting from, but the issue is around ensuring that becomes the standard and is there for everybody. That is the piece. The Minister of State will recall from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that one of the recommendations of the committee was that there would always be an independent advocate available in every case relating to children and it was one of the things it wanted cemented. It also wanted explicit prohibition around the placing of children with mental health issues in adult psychiatric units. I recognise the Minister of State is looking to increase capacity and find appropriate settings, but that prohibition is something the committee was speaking of and that is not necessarily here in the Bill in the same way. Issues and concerns have been identified. Tying it back to not just this kind of theoretical convention on the rights of the child but to the engagement Ireland has had with the committee on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and what it has been saying, that very real process is something that would strengthen the Bill. That is why referencing that convention within the Bill would strengthen it and would lead to more confidence that those areas and issues identified previously or perhaps in the future by the committee on the rights of the child would have an urgency in its response. That is why there is a real desire for that to be there in the Bill. We then come to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I was on the first disability matters group which was formed following the long battle to have ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The thing is, we have signed up to it and when we signed up to it, we were technically bound by it. The problem is in giving effect to the fact we have signed up to it and there were two strands to that. One related to the optional protocol and the endless wait that was there for years in terms of it allowing individuals to vindicate their rights under the convention, while the other side of it was for the State to show it recognised that by signing up to this convention, it meant it had to do things differently. A way to reflect that is referencing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the Bill and in our legislation. Again, those are two ways we can show that we did not just sign up but that we want to make it happen. If the new laws that come through reflect that, as well as that question of individuals being able to access their rights under the optional protocol, that would be meaningful. That is why we are pushing for this; it is a way of signalling we are doing things differently. I know the Minister of State is trying to do things differently with the legislation but the way of signalling that is one of the frames within which she is operating. Again, I do not want to go into the examples regarding the rights of persons with disabilities as there are many we could discuss. One of the areas I wish to acknowledge and which I feel very strongly about is the rights of older people. I used to work with the Older and Bolder advocacy organisation in the past. I consulted with older people in residential care homes right across Ireland on health policies that affected them which they were so often not consulted on. However, there are issues, for example, as regards things like congregated settings. We know there are persons with disabilities who are in congregated settings, which raises the question of how their rights are being properly vindicated when they are not being given independence in so much of the day-to-day decisions about their lives. This is often not due to any mental capacity lack, but rather to do with questions of the physical. There are many specific examples of where care is needed at the intersection between the rights of persons with disabilities and questions around mental health services. It would be good to have that frame and reference. It would remind all those who look to the new legislation that we need to be coming from a rights perspective. We are not managing a problem in society; we are coming with a rights frame when we deliver the supports and services needed. There is very good reason for this and it is not a stick to try to hit the Government with. These are tools and frames that allow for better legislation and better implementation of legislation as we go forward. I am happy to support those amendments. --- 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