Amendments to the Mental Health Bill only relate to how the children access mental health treatment. We believe this is a more appropriate definition that does not carry the reductive and stigmatising weight of "mental disorder" and it would bring the Bill in line with the language recommended by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which refers to psychosocial disability, the language used in Sharing the Vision, Ireland's national mental health policy, which uses "mental health difficulties" and the language recommended by the expert review group of the Mental Health Act, which was "mental illness".
Amendments Nos. 15 to 17, inclusive, relate to the definition of "mental disorder" and propose to replace it with a definition of "psychosocial disability" or "mental health difficulty".
Key terms by TF-IDF across 7,523 words from 14 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Laura Harmon and Nessa Cosgrove; Níl, Senators Cathal Byrne and Paul Daly.
| Question | Result | Tá–Níl |
|---|---|---|
| Recommendation put: | Lost | 8–31 |
| Question put: | Carried | 30–9 |
| Question put: "That section 35 stand part of the Bill." | Carried | 30–9 |
| Question put: | Carried | 32–8 |
| Question put: | Carried | 31–9 |
| Recommendation put: | Lost | 9–28 |
| Question put: | Carried | 31–10 |
| Amendment put: | Lost | 12–27 |
Party shown is the one each member held on 2025-12-09, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.