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

Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

Briefly. These amendments relate to the involuntary admission of a child in section 67 of the Bill. These amendments do not change the policy behind the section. Instead, these amendments have been drafted following commentary from the Attorney General's office that additional wording in section 67 is necessary. Amendment No. 129 allows for consideration to be given to whether involuntary admission is required and whether voluntary admission is possible or if such admission will be in the best interests of the child instead. This is in line with what is currently stated in section 67(2) of the Bill, which states that an application for involuntary admission can only be made where the child meets the criteria for admission and cannot be admitted voluntarily or with parental consent under another section. This amendment simply restates this point in a different manner.
Amendment No. 130 deletes subparagraphs (a) to (d) in section 67(2) of the Bill, as this is now covered by amendment No. 129.
Finally, amendment No. 131 rewords a subsection but does not change the policy. The HSE will still be permitted to make an application without prior examination where consent to the examination is refused, or where parental consent is required and the parents cannot be found. In those cases the examination will take place after the application is made.

---

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