Mr. George Kerwin:

We come up against this quite regularly. There is a problem as we would have people who experience PTSD, who do not realise they have it. I was talking to a gentleman two years ago about his near death experience when he was serving with the UN and he told me he had not had a proper night's sleep since that event three or four years earlier. We have to try to talk to them and let them know there is help. We can offer a certain level of help. We have welfare officers who will work with people who have had these experiences. We have provided professional help for individuals from time to time but we do not have the expertise to bring the support we can offer to the next level, which is often needed. What is required are lines of communication to other authorities and sources, to point people in the direction of availing of professional help for which they would not bear the cost or that we could get funding for specific cases so that we could help them. We do not know the extent of post traumatic stress but we keep coming up against cases of it. Believe it or not, the taxi driver who brought me to this meeting told me about his friend, who cracked up some time ago, an ex-sergeant who badly needs help. I asked him to get in touch with one of our posts. We need to get them to realise the situation they are in and to get people through the barrier of pride to ask for help. We can go so far in helping those who experience post traumatic stress but we need funding to bring that help to another level.