Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People Before Profit will support this legislation, which is in response to last May’s Court of Appeal ruling that found part of the Mental Health Act 2001 unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional because it allows detention of an involuntary patient to be extended for up to 12 months without an effective or independent review within a reasonable timeframe.

During this debate on this Bill, will the Minister of State clarify that the right of an individual to request a second tribunal under a six-month renewal order will not impinge on his or her right to an automatic tribunal within 21 days? If the Minister of State cannot reply now, perhaps someone could clarify this at a later stage.

I would like to take this opportunity to raise the urgent need to update in full the Mental Health Act 2001. Successive Governments have consistently neglected to do this and this Government is no different. The Minister of State has given no indication of the date by which the draft Bill for the new mental health Act will be made available. The Minister of State, Deputy Daly, has stated that the Bill will be “significantly progressed” by the end of this year. Mental health organisations and groups have waited more than three years to see a draft Bill and there is still no definitive date for its publication. Mental health services across the board continue to struggle hugely within existing resources. Massive underfunding has led to a chaotic system that is failing so many adults and children with mental health difficulties. Many Deputies have brought this forward. Front-line staff regularly highlight the stress they experience while trying to do their jobs in the most trying of circumstances. Recruitment and retention of staff remains one of the biggest challenges in our health service.

I have stated the following figures many times, but I believe it is worth repeating them because the statistics are quite shocking. Currently in child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, there is less than 40% of the required number of clinical psychologists in post, less than 50% of social workers and less than 60% of occupational therapists. Shockingly, 57.6% of Ireland is still not covered by out-of-hours CAMHS services. This means that children or young people experiencing a mental health crisis regularly have little option but to go to overstretched accident and emergency departments. This cannot be allowed to continue.

People Before Profit will include a substantial investment in mental health services in our budget submission for 2019. This would bring us into line with figures contained in A Vision for Change and would represent an 8% spend of the total healthcare budget. We should be moving towards 12% of the overall health budget, which would bring us closer to Britain's current spending on mental health services.

While I emphasise that this is an important amendment, there are other areas of legislation that also need to be urgently addressed, including the regulation of

community residences for people with mental health difficulties, ensuring that 16 and 17 year olds have legal rights to consent to admission or mental health treatment, which will be the subject of future debate and worth listening to, and that voluntary patients have rights to information and advocacy.

People Before Profit will support the Bill. Anything that gives patients more freedom and more rights to decisions about their health and well-being is very progressive.

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