Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

There are two areas I want to cover, but before I do, I highlight that in the past 24 hours the list of priority Bills for 2024 was published by the Chief Whip and I was really surprised to see that reform of the Mental Health Act 2001 was not on that. Some of what we are talking about is around the confusion that lies in much of our legislation. That legislation in particular does not vindicate the rights of person with disabilities or those who might be neurodivergent and it certainly does not bring us into line with the UNCRPD. It is on the priority drafting list, but we must take account of pre-legislative scrutiny.

I know Senator Black is on the call as well. We have done a lot of stuff on this in the Sub-Committee on Mental Health. Prelegislative scrutiny was completed in May 2022. I am really surprised to see that it is not on the priority publication list. Do you think that bringing legislation like that more into line with things like the UNCRPD, where your rights are clearly required to be vindicated within the legislation, would push services like CAMHS to rectify some of these issues? Would you like to talk about that? It was a surprise to me that it is not on the list.