Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Mulligan, Ms Stack and Mr. Fitzgerald.

It was going lovely. It was nice to have a good news story until they came to the latest exchange with Mr. Fitzgerald on funding. I am amazed at the coverage that they have managed to maintain, even over the pace of 2020. I read some of the reports and I noted that. Often, when we talk to younger people, it is about doing things outside the box. Samaritans, a long time ago, would have been perceived to be run by the church or something, and people did not have much confidence in it. That has changed, with face-to-face meetings, Zoom and Teams calls and even emails. It is amazing. I read the statistics. They show nearly 11,500 emails in the Republic of Ireland and nearly 12,500 in Northern Ireland. It is probably the only all-island organisation. I was delighted to see that it is in collaboration with other groups and it is looking at piloting more, which was a barrier in this country. Many different groups, volunteers and NGOs were all trying to do the right thing but they all had different plans. That joined-up thinking certainly is the way to go.

They covered the prisons, the Traveller community, and of course, the older people during Covid. However, I was also thinking about people with disabilities and the farming community as well. During the pandemic, we have received many calls from these people. Samaritans offers a 24-7 service which, as many of us in recent meetings have said, should be a priority for any Government, no matter who is in power.

Mr. Mulligan also mentioned schools. My main questions are on schools because education is key. By educating people, the stigma can be removed because they will know what they are talking about and fear of not knowing is normally an easy way to stigmatise something.

Mental health in the workplace was mentioned. There are significant difficulties in this regard. We have had it over the years. The best example is somebody serving in the Army who is due to be deployed, say, to the Lebanon, and use live rounds. If that individual mentioned any inkling of a mental health difficulty, his or her chances of promotion or overseas work would be gone for telling the truth and being honest. That is a big worry.

Has the organisation met resistance in any school to going in and talking about this because it has been mentioned in previous meetings? I can recall going into schools well over ten years ago. One would have to be careful of which age group one was dealing with. I met a lot of resistance. The perception was that if we spoke about mental health, it put ideas into people's heads and I always countered that by saying if you give somebody €20 to put petrol or diesel into the car it does not mean necessarily that he or she will crash it. How can that stigma be broken down? A great deal of money - in Australia, it is over €1 billion - has been put into mental health provision. What would be the Samaritans' Christmas wish list or Christmas present for this year? I suspect that this is only the tip of the iceberg when people are coming out of Covid and realising they have lost jobs. They could have lost marriages, homes and so on. There could be a tsunami of mental health issues and Samaritans needs support. If they could respond on the education question, the workplace, prisons and their wish list, I would be delighted.