Jerry Cowley (Mayo, Independent)

My first real exposure to suicide was as a young trainee GP in Swinford, County Mayo, when I saw two elderly men both laid out side by side on a slab in the mortuary in Swinford Hospital. The sight of two men lying side by side with the track of a rope on their necks is one that will stay with me for the rest of my life. These two men did not know one another but one heard about the other committing suicide and decided to end his life as well. It appeared to me to be a terrible waste of life. I looked at the men's situations and discovered they had families. Yet they felt so lonely and depressed they decided to end it all.

The situation has grown even sadder since then because we have seen the alarming rate of increase in young people taking their own lives. This has happened over the years since I was a young GP in Swinford. Many things have changed since then. Society has changed and become more Americanised and more orientated towards profit and money. God has been replaced by the god of money. It is all about having it all and getting on with it. If a person cannot get on with it, he or she is pushed to the side.

People face pressures from all sides, including the media. People face pressures to perform, to be the smartest, the most beautiful, the most slender, the most successful or the person who gets laid every night. These are terrible messages that are being directed at people all the time. These messages are forms of pure propaganda by people who are just trying to make money out of young people and society in general. We see it in the care of the elderly, which we debated yesterday in the House. The Government is aiding and abetting a situation that is all about profit. We should all take part in looking after older people but we have given it over totally to private operators who, in the absence of anything else, are doing the best job they can. However, it is still private enterprise and operators who have to turn a profit. Why do we not look after older people ourselves? Why are communities not doing it? Communities could look after older people. Why should care of the elderly be profit-driven and not community based? We can look after older people in our communities and some communities are doing it.

We have made a god of money and put these terrible pressures on our young people. They are born, through no fault of their own, into a society which has these pressures. It is time we examined these pressures. Where is Government money being spent? It is being spent on so many silly, difficult, rotten things that really do not matter. The money should be spent on psychiatric services. We know the graph for alcohol consumption goes way up, together with the binge drinking of our young people. We also know that the money that needs to go into psychiatric services is not available. These are things we know for certain.

I also know for certain, as a GP, that supports are not available. So many people — one quarter — come to their GP before committing suicide yet I think that sometimes GPs do not have the resources to deal with this. The answers are obvious. There is an onus on us to work towards a better society. This means putting the resources in place to support the things that matter.

See this speech in context