I move:
That, pursuant to subsection 2º of section 2 of Article 25 of the constitution, Seanad Éireann concur with the Government in a request to the President to sign the Mental Treatment (Detention in Approved Institutions) Bill, 1961, on a date which is earlier than the fifth day after the date on which the Bill shall have been presented to him.
The Seanad is aware that the purpose of the Bill is to regularise the legal position from a current date in regard to the 280 temporary patients whose continued detention in mental institutions was irregular by reason of failure to confirm by Ministerial Order requests for extensions made by the authorities of the institutions in which the patients were under treatment.
It is desirable that that legal position should be regularised at the earliest possible moment.
It is no harm, however, to emphasise again that while, legally, the continued detention of these patients was irregular, from the treatment point of view, it was necessary and in the interests of the patients. No patient has been detained, or will be detained, for a day longer than if the procedure in regard to him had followed the normal and correct course.