Mental Health Bill 2024: From the Seanad
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-29
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Mary Butler (FF), Waterford

These amendments update the definition of "nominated person" to clarify that a nominated person must be an adult, which is a person 18 years or older. The rest of the amendments in this grouping change the word "nominee" to "nominated person". This is being done to ensure consistency in language across the Bill.
A nominated person, as I said, can be a person over the age of 16 who an adult or child admitted to an inpatient mental health setting can nominate to attend meetings with them and receive information of a general nature about the person. The wording of the Bill has been carefully put together to ensure that a nominated person can be any person of the admitted person’s choosing. It can be a family member, a loved one, friend or a carer, or otherwise a person can appoint a peer advocate or a professional advocate to act as his or her nominated person.
This is a really good element to the Bill in that they can have that nominated person to support them through their care journey.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-29