Mental Health Bill 2024: From the Seanad
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-29
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Liam Quaide (SD), Cork East

I commend the Minister of State on the inclusion of this section. I note my concern about the levels of professional defensiveness and detachment from the reality of service user experiences exhibited by the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland in its attempts to remove the term "pharmacological restraint" from the Mental Health Bill. It is highly invalidating of the experiences of people. These people do exist and I have worked in the mental health system myself. They are people who have been over-sedated, who have experienced medication in a coercive or overly restrictive manner, even if that is not the intention, over the course of their psychiatric treatment. The notion that it does not exist is just perplexing. It is worth noting that for people who have already experienced significant trauma in their lives, pharmacological restraint can be traumatic and can compound the very distress that the mental health services are meant to alleviate. That was a regressive intervention on the college's part and I am glad that it was not agreed to.
It is not just Mental Health Reform or cohorts of service users who are saying this; the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission have said it. The World Psychiatric Association, in its 2023 position statement on alternatives to coercion, explicitly identified chemical or pharmacological restraint as a form of restraint, which it is, experienced by people in mental health services. That is not to say that it is done with sinister intention, but it needs to be recognised, monitored and carefully managed. It is also recognised and regulated in mental health services in England, Scotland and Wales.
As stated, I welcome the inclusion of this section. It has been stated previously that the definition could be better safeguarded. To say that it is used for treatment does not quite go far enough, but at the same time, I recognise the progress made on this and want to validate it.

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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