Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

A Mental Health Bill is currently being drafted by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel to replace the existing Mental Health Acts 2001 – 2022 and overhaul our approach to mental health legislation. While the Department expects many of the proposed changes in the new Bill to be dealt with generally within existing resources, some of the planned changes are expected to carry additional costs, such as the enhanced role for Authorised Officers in the involuntary admission process and the expansion of the Mental Health Commission’s regulatory remit to include community residences and services.

Preliminary work on costing the additional resources required by the Mental Health Commission, as the regulator of mental health services, and the HSE, as the main provider of mental health services, has been carried out. A more in-depth exercise to estimate projected costs will be carried out in the context of seeking approval from Cabinet to publish the Bill in the coming months. Following the enactment of the Bill, officials in my Department will work with key stakeholders to ready the sector for the commencement of the new Mental Health Act, and will include the allocation of additional resources through the annual Estimates process.

More broadly, mental health services are moving towards more community-based care for people accessing mental health services, and away from prolonged care in inpatient mental health settings where possible, in line with our national mental health policy, Sharing the Vision, and Sláintecare. Continued investment in mental health services at all levels, including community and inpatient services, will be needed to ensure the continued efficacy and improvement of services and to continue to uphold the rights of people accessing services.

Priority drafting was granted to the Bill in all three legislative sessions in 2023, and the first legislative session in 2024. The Bill was granted priority drafting for publication in the current session and intensive work is ongoing to finalise the drafting of the Bill to ready it for publication later in the current session.