As we get to the end of this Bill, I commend all the Minister of State’s officials who have worked on this legislation, all the stakeholders who have engaged with the Minister of State and the Minister of State herself. She has engaged with many of us across the House, and particularly with some of her Government colleagues who had concerns in relation to the Bill. I wish to speak to this group of Seanad amendments because it deals with the issue of involuntary adult admissions. In many ways, depriving anybody of their liberty is an incredibly serious thing, so it should be difficult to secure an involuntary adult admission. Trying to find that line between it being difficult and too difficult has been the job the Minister of State has had to do. Where I had some concerns during earlier phases of the Bill was in relation to dual diagnosis. I want to be careful using this term because when I use it, I am relating it to dual diagnosis of addiction and mental health issues. Of course, as has become very obvious from the conversations in the Seanad with colleagues there, a dual diagnosis can mean many things. It can, for example, relate to a dual diagnosis of autism and mental health issues or many other conditions. Specifically, in relation to dual diagnosis for addiction and mental illness, the Minister of State will know, because I have plagued her about it many times, about a report on dual diagnosis community inquiry. The report, Dual Diagnosis: a Community Perspective, carried out by Dublin City University and the Finglas Addiction Support Team, FAST, specifically references areas in relation to dual diagnosis for addiction and mental health which need improvement. There have been significant improvements since that report was published in 2020, namely around the national clinical programme. The report references areas of the Mental Health Bill where the idea of a “wrong door” was being experienced by people. In some cases people were not able to access a psychiatric facility because they may have been using either a legal or illegal substance, and at the very moment they were in crisis or seeking to deal with their addiction, they found that both services, addiction and mental health, were often citing their other diagnosis as a barrier to them entering. As one person in the report said, "when we get somebody into a service and there is opportunity to make good progress, it should not be missed." The idea of catching somebody as they are falling is really important. I watched the debate on this in the Seanad very closely. The Minister of State was very strong in outlining why, in primary legislation, the phrase “dual diagnosis” could not appear. I am anxious for the Minister of State to repeat the commitment she gave in the Seanad here in the Dáil as regards a dual diagnosis protocol. I ask her to outline to the House how that might work or to write to me about it. What I want is to record in this House what happened in the other House, that is, the attempts made to make changes to the Mental Health Bill and the reasons that did not happen. While things might not be able to be dealt with in primary legislation, that does not mean we cannot deal with them overall. Regardless of what happens to the Mental Health Bill, I ask the Minister of State to continue to be committed to the issue of dual diagnosis for addiction and mental health.

Sentiment score: 0.13