Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House to discuss mental health in Ireland. I support Deputy Browne's Bill, which takes some very positive and necessary steps to address some of the shortcomings in our mental health system and puts in place some constructive measures to improve it. Action is needed because we have failed to do certain things. Mental health reform has been a very useful guide to us.

The Bill gives more power to the patient, the person involved, and that is an important clarification to be made. Too often we talk about service users and clients, but we are talking about people. Having that written into the Bill is a really important language change.

The Bill targets the inherent deficiencies in the Mental Health Act, seeking to make our system more compassionate and more flexible, reinforcing a basic human right with the highest attainable standards of mental health and the right to the least restrictive care. It is almost three years since the publication of the report of the expert group on the review of the Mental Health Act and the Government has consistently failed to meet its own timeframe for publishing a general scheme of a Bill to update the 2001 Act in full. Under the existing Mental Health Act 2001, there is continued violation of human rights standards among people who are being treated in hospital for mental illness. Senator Devine outlined how that looks with people wandering around corridors, lost, not knowing how they got there and certainly not knowing how they can get out. Rectifying this is overdue and this is an opportunity to advocate for the amendment of the Mental Health Act 2001 in full. It seeks to give voice to those directly affected - voices sometimes weakened, often unheard or even silenced within the mental health system in the past.

It is good that this important Bill on mental health is being discussed and debated in the Seanad. The Taoiseach recently described this House as a place where courageous and outspoken things were said, a place which brought together diverse collections of men and women, poets and thinkers, specialists and innovators. It is the responsibility of this House, therefore, to speak out and to work on behalf of those who cannot speak out.

Last week, we had another important debate on mental health in the presence of the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, when Senator Freeman introduced another important Bill on the care-----