Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister of State. He is coming down with congratulations today, but I genuinely mean it because I worked with him on the Joint Committee on Education and Skills for a number of years. He is a very able, informed and definite personality. He knows where he wants to go. I do not think he will be put off course very quickly. I wish him all that is best in this Ministry. There is much he can do. This is a significant area for children and the elderly. Everyone is talking about Brexit, but no one wants to attempt to talk about how we age in Ireland, even though our population is getting older and over the next 25 years, 25% of us will be aged over 65. That is a debate for another day.

I congratulate Senator Freeman. The Bill is her gift and we are just co-signatories. She did the work and had the idea. She came from a professional, brilliant workaday background. She brought all that into the Seanad and onto paper in the Bill. I want to wish her much luck. The work was brilliantly done and comes from a central place in her. She knows what she is talking about and how things could be changed. It was her gift which we had the privilege of signing. It is very much her Bill.

The Bill states that to put young people in a mental health service for adults is inexcusable, counter-therapeutic and purely custodial. I wish to make a philosophical point. Many Senators have spoken to the Bill very well. As a society, we have forgotten the distinction between an adult and a child, and those stages have become amalgamated and enmeshed. There is what one would call a disappearance of childhood within society which we, as a society, have tolerated. There is very little difference in our music industry, humour, clothes and food. The language used in front of children or that which children use is not different. In terms of expectations, attitudes and reactions, there is an absence of boundaries between the adult and child which is part of the reason we do not stop and think about what we are doing to a young fractured child when he or she is put into adult environments.

Sometimes we ask who is the mother and who is the child, and tell people that mummy looks as young as a child. A woman who is aged 47 may look 18. A child who is aged 13 may look 23. The media industry, including film, video and television, has created a sense of knowledge and way of knowing around that.

There are adult themes for children. This is a completely different viewpoint, but it is not really because it feeds into our lack of distinction. I remember railing against the sale of the national lottery to build the children's hospital, but understanding why it was necessary in order to find €400 million. We have only now turned the sod on it and are still rowing about the project.

Members should look at television, film, books and fashion. Adults are now selling sweets in advertisements, using the voices of children. There is a constant absence of boundaries between the child and the adult, which is a way of advertising, selling and marketing. A child will now advertise a car or food. There is no differentiation. In looking philosophically at the arts and the use of media, what keeps coming back to me is the disappearance of childhood and the amalgamation of adults and children, creating mini-adults. That came into my mind because many Senators spoke to the Bill. Sometimes we forget that there is a major difference between a young child, a young adolescent, an adult and a young adult.

I gracefully and gratefully commend the Bill and Senator Freeman, because she brought it to the House. We had the privilege of being co-signatories. I wish her luck and will support the Bill. I would take the advice of colleagues that there is always something to be added and some space to be filled in. We have an open ear, given the appointment of a new Minister of State who certainly has an open and good mind. He is an educationalist as well as a wonderful foster father. There are three or four people on his team.