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

I want to make a more nuanced point on pharmacological restraint. I welcome this, as I said. Mental Health Reform has also welcomed the recognition of pharmacological restraint as a restrictive practice that must be regulated. It has also warned that the definition may be too narrow to capture the full reality of how people can be pharmacologically or chemically restrained. That concern is well founded. As I was alluding to earlier, it is not enough to say, as per the Bill, that medication was given for treatment if, in practice, the effect is to control behaviour, limit autonomy or movement, suppress mobility or render a person unable to engage meaningfully or exercise control over his or her own body. That is a weakness of this. Mental Health Reform has also called for a comprehensive system-wide review of sedation practices, including therapeutic sedation, rapid tranquilisation and pharmacological restraint. This reflects a long-standing concern of mental health advocates that there is insufficient clarity, consistency and oversight in this area. It is important that the Mental Health Commission code of practice resulting from this is robust and addresses less visible forms of coercion, including over-sedation and the misuse of pro re nata , PRN, or as-needed medication.

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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