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

I think there is a lot of confusion here. To be honest, there has been a lot of briefing against the patient advocacy services that are being provided. It is important to put this on the record of the Dáil. The patient advocacy service is an independent, free and confidential service which can provide support to people who wish to make a complaint about the care they or a family member has received in a public acute hospital or in a public or private nursing home. It also provides support in the aftermath of a patient safety incident. It currently provides supports for people with disabilities and people who use mental health services. It is being rolled out. That is the first point. I met with it to discuss how we can accelerate and expand it into mental health as quickly as possible. Just so there is no doubt that this is happening, it is happening.
The second point is it is in the programme for Government. It is a programme for Government commitment to extend the patient advocacy service to support those accessing public mental health services. I was the person who wrote it into the programme for Government because I was involved in writing the mental health and a lot of the health element of the programme for Government. That is the second piece.
Deputy Clarke is so right about how important advocacy is but the difference in this Bill is each person, voluntary or involuntary, is entitled to have a nominated person. That nominated person will be there to support them. The onus is on all of us when the Bill is enacted that people know they are entitled to a nominated person who can support them to access the patient advocacy service. I think we are doing a disservice to the patient advocacy service, which is independent, free and confidential and is doing a great job around the country. It has to scale up and it will. I will fund it in the budget and it will happen.

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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