Mental Health Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-16 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel While I do not have difficulty with some of the sentiment of what the Minister of State said, I have to take issue, respectfully, with her. There is nothing vague about these two amendments. First, they are in plain, simple English. Second, it is not up to me, I am not the Minister of State and do not have the bank of officials behind me to tie up the legislative, legal or parliamentary language. It was very clear what these two amendments say, and they say simply that: "This Act shall be compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child..." and "This Act shall be compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities...". How the Minister of State could suggest they are vague is way beyond me and I do not understand it. I am not asking her at this stage to rewrite the legislation. I have been consistent on all Stages of the Bill. I have stood here through it all and continuously reiterated the importance of those two conventions, so none of this comes as a surprise to anyone. The Minister of State will know of it because I have seen engagement with her Department from correspondence that has been shared with me by a number of the advocacy groups I have spoken to and referenced today. I hear what the Minister of State is saying and respectfully disagree with her. When I spoke on these amendments I indicated this would be a determining factor in my personal consideration of this Bill and for that reason I will push this because it is important we have on the record where people stand in relation to these two pieces of really important legislation. I have spoken, as have many people on the Opposition side, and engaged with advocacy groups who have championed this. I acknowledge again the enormous work former Minister of State Finian McGrath did in this area and the promises he was made back then about this important matter. Let us be clear what we are going to do here in a few moments. The Minister of State has considered it, she is aware of it. Forget about the detail and about vagueness. I am just making that point. I want to move on. I do not believe it is vague. I have shown, from the very first day of my engagement with this Bill, my commitment to put in only something that is there and nothing I made up. I wanted to support it. I have made the point that we are involved in primary legislation and therefore I am somewhat disappointed the Minister of State is not in a position to accept it. It did not come to any surprise I was tabling these amendments back to her because she would have seen the list of amendments. I need her to clearly remember that I did not press the amendment to a vote as I was not going to in some way tie my own hands so that I could not reintroduce this amendment. I somewhat sat on my hands because I know the process and that it would roll on to the next point. We are now on Report Stage, which is our last opportunity in this House to make the case. A lot of people outside and in here will be exceptionally disappointed because it is so simple and logical and only follows through on commitments that Ireland signed up to. I was nearly going to bring the signatories and the document in here today to make the point. I hear what the Minister of State is saying and I said at the outset we are engaging in a respectful dialogue because this is a parliamentary process. We will go on this afternoon or tomorrow to do other work because that it the very nature of it. I respect that and will not think any less of her in terms of her parliamentary job. She has a lot going on herself and she is the Government Chief Whip as well so it is an enormously busy time for her and I want to acknowledge that because it is important. We all have to sleep. We all have to get up and wash our teeth in the morning. We all have to go to bed and put the cat out. Sometimes people lose sight of the human elements of each and every one of us and we can only give it so much and so much of our time. We can only base it on our own experience. As I said at the beginning, we are here to advocate for the people who put us in here and I feel I have given it my best shot. I know other people have. I am somewhat disappointed. I would love to think that due to those four sentences I have said to the Minister of State she might change her mind but I do not think so. I thank her. --- 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