Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue for discussion. It has been and continues to be a priority of the Government to deal with the current high levels of suicide and deliberate self-harm. While we will never eliminate suicide completely, we can and must make every effort to reduce the number of lives lost to suicide by ensuring a broad range of Departments, State agencies, non-statutory organisations and - perhaps most importantly - local communities are involved in a co-ordinated partnership with the aim of tackling this issue. Equally, I believe we should have a zero tolerance approach to suicide. As the House will be aware, the Government published Connecting for Life, which is Ireland’s national strategy to reduce suicide, in June of last year. The strategy, which covers the period from 2015 to 2020, sets out a vision of an Ireland where fewer lives are lost through suicide and where communities and individuals are empowered to improve their mental health and well-being.

Connecting for Life has seven goals: better understanding of suicidal behaviour; supporting communities to prevent and respond to suicidal behaviour; targeted approaches for those vulnerable to suicide; improved access, consistency and integration of services; safe and high-quality services; reduce access to means; and better data and research.

Suicide is a complex problem and addressing suicidal behaviour means supporting people in many different ways. It also requires a co-ordinated effort across many different sectors and levels of society, from service providers, communities, families and friends. Connecting for Life places a major value on partnership and is designed to co-ordinate and focus the efforts in suicide prevention. The National Office for Suicide Prevention helps to support a wide array of work in communities, in partnership with the voluntary sector across the country, that focus on promoting positive mental health and reducing suicide and self-harm by providing very substantial amounts of grant funding each year as well as by assisting in co-ordinating and giving strategic direction to the work undertaken.

One of the objectives in the new strategy is to develop and implement national standards and guidelines for statutory and non-statutory organisations contributing to suicide prevention, which is what the Deputy is looking for. A working group comprising representatives from community, statutory and voluntary organisations was established to progress the development of a set of national minimum standards for organisations working in the area of suicide prevention. The work of this group is well advanced. In December 2015, the group submitted a first draft report to the National Office for Suicide Prevention, and this is currently under consideration. A range of local and national services provide suicide bereavement support to families and communities. The National Office for Suicide Prevention, Console and Turas le Cheile have developed national quality standards for all level of bereavement support in Ireland. These standards provide a significant resource for those organisations providing support to individuals at a very vulnerable time in their lives. In addition, a number of service evaluations have been commissioned by the National Office for Suicide Prevention, with a view to ensuring that services which receive funding from NOSP are safe, effective and evidence-based and are in line with the goals and objectives in Connecting for Life. It is the Government's hope that the implementation of this new strategy will help us achieve our goal of fewer lives lost through suicide through an improved response to suicide, including improved access to high quality services.

I thank the Deputy. We are coming near to the time an election will be called and I know the Deputy is not standing. On behalf of all those who have had an interest in mental health, whether good or bad, down through the years, I thank him for being one of the pioneers in the area and one of the very first to talk about it in an open fashion in this House.

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