James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Mental Health Commission has consistently called for the regulation of 24-hour supervised residences to protect vulnerable people and has called on the Government to take action in this regard. The report of the expert group on the review of the Mental Health Act 2001 was published in 2015. It made 165 key recommendations to make mental health laws fit for purpose. It is now three years since it was published. We have had three Ministers with responsibility for mental health in that time and three years of broken promises from those Ministers to the effect that these recommendations would be implemented. Alarmingly, only one of these recommendations has been implemented. We do not even have a draft Bill addressing the other recommendations. Two of these recommendations, Nos. 124 and 125, specifically recommend giving the Mental Health Commission the powers it seeks in its report to empower it to take action to ensure people in 24-hour residences are at risk of abuse and substandard living conditions. Most people were shocked at the content of the report but were equally disturbed to learn that the Mental Health Commission does not have these basic powers to protect vulnerable people availing of mental health services.

I have raised this issue before but there seems to have been little progress since. When is the Government going to act on these specific recommendations to empower the Mental Health Commission to protect these vulnerable people under the care of mental health services? Is the Minister of State engaging at all stages of the implementation of these recommendations with the relevant stakeholders. In particular, is he fully engaged with the Mental Health Commission and keeping it aware and updated on any steps being taken? I listened to the comment about engaging with the Mental Health Commission on refining the draft text. It would be far more important and relevant to engage with the Mental Health Commission at this stage of the drafting of the text, rather than refining it later. Ultimately, if the recommendations are to be implemented and the powers given to the Mental Health Commission, it has to be engaged at the early stage of the drafting and not just come in at the end when the Bill has been drafted. At that stage it might be sent back to stage one again if it is not fit for purpose. The Mental Health Commission is the key stakeholder on this issue. It will be implementing the recommendations and must be involved from the very start of this process.

See this speech in context