Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, to the House. I am speaking on this Bill on behalf of my colleague, Senator Swanick, who is unfortunately unable to be here this evening. It is great to see this Bill get to this Stage. It has passed all Stages in Dáil Éireann and was prioritised by the Joint Committee on Health. This demonstrates the appetite there is for change. I commend the work of our mental health spokesperson, Deputy James Browne, in this regard. He has overseen the passage of this Bill through Dáil Éireann, the establishment of a dedicated committee on mental health and the introduction of further Bills which will benefit those who suffer from mental ill health.

The Bill contains certain significant changes which strengthen the rights of people who are in hospital for mental health care. The Bill will also support the right of inpatients to make decisions about their own treatment by linking the Mental Health Act 2001 with recent law that affirms that everybody should be presumed to have capacity to make decisions. I wish to flag that we will be introducing an amendment on Report Stage to replace each instance of the word "patient" in the Bill with the word "person". The reason for this is that under the Mental Health Act 2001 a "patient" is defined as someone to whom an admission order relates. This excludes those who do not fall under an admission order. We reserve the right to introduce an amendment on Report Stage which will remove reference to section 3 of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and replace it with the same text as in section 3 of the 2015 Act. The reason behind this is that the reference to capacity as defined under section 3 of the 2015 Act means that section 2 could not commence until the 2015 Act commences.