Ms Ber Grogan:

We watched Senator Seery Kearney debating with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, on Committee Stage amendments and I sent an email afterwards to thank her for how strongly she spoke on human rights and about people with psychosocial disabilities. It was very welcome and people with lived experience who we link in with watch these debates and listen in and pay attention to legislation that makes a difference to their lives. It is really appreciated to hear the Senator make those arguments on the floor of the Seanad.

First, regarding January 2023 - that is me throwing out my wishful thinking - we have been waiting for a long time for reform of the Mental Health Act, 2001. The expert group on the review of the Mental Health Act 2001 reported back in 2016 but yesterday the Sub-committee on Mental Health published the pre-legislative scrutiny report into the heads of Bill with 19 recommendations. One of those recommendations is on the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and the alignment and linkages between the two. That is really welcome and is something we know the Attorney General is working on at the moment; we also know it is a priority piece for the Minister of State in the Department of Health with responsibility for mental health and older people, Deputy Butler. We are asking really nicely that while this side of Christmas is probably not realistic, the final Bill would be drafted by the Attorney General by January. We could all put that date out there for when priority legislation would be decided on next year.

On the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, the Senator is absolutely right. For years since the 2015 Act was enacted Mental Health Reform has been highlighting the discriminatory exclusion of people involuntarily detained under Part 4 of the Mental Health Act and under the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act 2010. We did a human rights analysis on the heads of Bill to reform the Mental Health Act last year. That highlighted again the need for the linkages between the two so that is when we started to write to all of the relevant Ministers. The advanced health care directive is an amendment that relates to health, the assisted decision-making relates to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and the Mental Health Act was being looked at by the Sub-committee on Mental Health. This is something that we have been asking about and bringing up in different committees; there are a lot of moving parts and we want you guys to talk to each other as we have been asking for the same things from everyone.

The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, were mentioned in the Senator's speech and it agrees that the exclusion is discriminatory, as do the Mental Health Commission and the decision support service. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, and everyone we have spoken to about it this year agrees the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Bill 2022 is discriminatory. If the only solution is that we have to wait for reform of the Mental Health Act, that is why that needs to happen right now. The longer the delay, the longer the omission so anything that we can do to support your calls we will absolutely do.

On coercive practices, the Mental Health Commission publishes an annual report on the number of restrictive practices. In Sharing the Vision, our national mental health policy, we have an aim to work towards a zero-seclusion, zero-restraint method of practice. It is something that is being looked at more internationally around coercive control and restrictive practices. The exclusion and prohibition of certain practices, particularly for under-18s, is something we would advocate for. Again that is linked to what is happening with the reform of the Mental Health Act so it is really about fitting the jigsaw pieces together and we are really glad the Senator has mentioned them here.