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

Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

The Minister of State will recall we discussed that the full prohibition on the placing of children in adult psychiatric facilities is something the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has specifically called for. The amendments that have been ruled out of order reflected an attempt to be true to this prohibition. At a minimum the language in amendment No. 35 is quite a reasonable compromise. We know that "in so far as is practicable" is quite a wide framing. We have had constitutional debates in this country about the difference between what is practicable and what is possible and where the bar lies and sits. It can make a massive difference. Unfortunately, "practicable" can be interpreted in a very diluted way as what is easiest and most convenient to do. The bar can be a bit low, or could be lowered, with regard to "in so far as is practicable". As a phrasing it is not as strong as we would like to have.
The phrase "emergency circumstances" allows for those exceptional and, hopefully, very rare circumstances, as suggested by the Senators. It would not lead to the risk, which I know might not be the intention of the Minister of State or the practice intention of others, of a practice developing in the future whereby if there is always a space in a particular place, and people know they can get a space there, it would be very "practicable" as it is available. There might be a situation whereby the nearest appropriate facility is further away so the nearer option might be used even if it is not ideal. Having as hard a language as possible is better and a better safety net. I urge the Minister of State to accept the amendment. It is a very small shift from "practicable" to "emergency". It would allow for contingencies and would send a useful signal down the line from the Minister of State as to how the legislation is to be implemented as we move towards, hopefully, getting to a situation where this never occurs.

---

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