Victor Boyhan urges action on 50 vacant mental health beds

Well, Leader, firstly, I'm happy to accept the order of business here, as proposed by you today. Two issues, really, I just want to bring up. One is the ongoing issues around mental health. And, of course, I had yesterday Minister Mary Butler in here in relation to a commencement matter. I don't think we made a lot of progress, and therefore I'm going on now to ask formally for another debate. I know we will have the Minister in on the 18th of March to complete the mental health bill, and I think that's really important, and that date is now being confirmed, so we all are aware of it. It's the day after St. Patrick's Day. But I suppose really what I want to talk to is it's sort of a cross-edge thing. I want to renew my call for the Minister for Justice to come in on this occasion, Jim O'Callaghan, because you will all know, and we've discussed it here before, the RTE Investigates Programme that was carried on two nights, about two weeks ago, and it identified the very serious issues of the shortage of beds. And my commencement matter yesterday raised the situation of the 50 beds that are currently provided. They're there, but they're vacant. The Minister makes the case that it's difficult to recruit staff, and I understand that, and I take that on board. And so, therefore, it has to be incrementally opened up, maybe over a period. But there are currently 50 beds confirmed by RTE Investigates Programme, and that is an issue. And, again, we hear from the likes of Shine and the Irish Penal Trust and other advocacy groups that, and, again, we heard yesterday that Judge Alan Mitchell expressed serious concern from Cloverhill, at a hearing in Cloverhill prison that he was conducting, of the amount of people that are presenting to him that he has no option but to put back in prison, and he's not prepared or going to continue to do it. He's put the government on notice, and that's been documented in various media yesterday. So I think there are challenges around it. It's not all a mental... While it's a mental health issue, the blockage is tied up with justice, the prison system, and it's not the appropriate place. You don't get well in prison if you have mental health problems. And some of your problems while you're in prison are connected with all of that. So I would suggest that maybe we would have some sort of maybe commentary from the Minister of Justice on this occasion because I think we have to have a collaborative approach, get the 50 beds open, and be reasonable and say it's going to be transitional and it might be ambitious, but it would be great to say if we get 25 this year and 25 next year or whatever, but let's hear what the logistics are and have a reasonable and fair and pragmatic debate about that. And then finally, I just want to conclude by saying I've continuously asked for rural housing, and many people in here are senators who represent rural communities. You know better than me in relation to the demands for rural housing, and we have continuously been told we cannot proceed, and we have rural out-of-date guidelines. But there are imaginative ways how we can enhance our villages and our towns. We can have small clusters of houses. Clearly there's very good things going on in terms of renovation and restoration, but we need to do more. And there are a lot of people who would like to work at home two or three days a week. They want to support their rural communities. We see GAA clubs, sports clubs, parishes, national schools, all now facing imminent closure because of the lack of people. And people want the choice, and it is about various choices. And I would expect nothing less than any rural public representative to be here beating the drum about getting people, or affording people, the opportunity to live in their rural communities. Thank you. Thank you.