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

I welcome this opportunity to address the House this evening. I have waited a long time to address the Minister for Health. I thought at first it would be a dream to come in and address him, but on the very first line one's dreams can be shattered because the Minister is not present in the Chamber.

A lot of points have been made here already today. I have agreed with some, and some maybe not. The one thing that struck me was that everybody is talking in this Chamber about statistics, figures and percentages. Nobody spoke about the real people, the human beings. It is strange. I am going to humanise the matter and hopefully the Ministers present in the Chamber can go back to their buddies, their fellow Deputies, and say that while we speak about the facts, figures and statistics, let us talk about the human impact of this issue.

I spoke to a lady called Katie Quinlan in the last two days. She is a welfare officer in University College Cork. She has written a letter to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar and unfortunately has not got a reply yet, but she did ask me to question the Minister. As he is not present I will read a few quotes from the letter to give Deputies a perspective on what actually happens. Suicide or mental health should no longer be considered as abstract subjects, it should be humanised because we are talking about people, not about facts and figures. The letter states:

Dear Mr. Varadkar, This week I have watched you disregard a significant portion of this country's population in one swift cruel move. This week I watched you, a Government official, blatantly do a 360 [degree turn] on a promise you made to various mental health charities and advocates in the past few months.

Only last night in Cork I was joined by two other Sinn Féin Deputies, Deputy Ó Laoghaire and Deputy Ó Broin, and how ironic it was that we had a side-by-side protest outside City Hall, one on homelessness and housing and one on mental health and suicide. Is it not amazing how the two issues overlap? People here are not seeing the big picture.

The next issue I wish to talk about is stigma. I have worked in mental health on a voluntary basis for over 14 years. I have met former taoisigh, I have been to Brussels to make representations on the issue and I have had an involvement in many documentaries and books. I can recommend to the House one such book, Preventable Death: The Scandal of Male Suicide in Modern Ireland.

Members should check it out. We were going to call it, "A walk to the shed alone", but the author said it was too hard. It is not too hard. One can hear it in my voice because it is real. I hope that by speaking in the House, the Government will understand that every time the Minister comes in here to speak about mental health, he should get it into his head that it is not a matter of statistics. It is reality.

We talk about A Vision for Changebut let us implement it. For years, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party talked about it. It is like going into a bank and cashing the thanks; it does not happen. Let us get real and let us work together on it. I have no problem doing so. Let us remember there is no colour, creed, class or religion when it comes to a suicide victim.

In her letter, Ms Quinlan went on to state: "Your decision to cut mental health funding tells those that need more help that they can't have it." That is a fair statement. I did not make that up. Ms Quinlan continued:

Those that get the courage and conviction to reach out are now at more of a risk of having their plea for help fall on deaf ears.

We are a country that bows its head and gets on with things. We're Irish, we're stubborn and we're incessantly polite. Now is the time we ... [are going to stand up and] fight.

Those are fair words from a woman. She is being realistic. Being realistic - I can empathise with every bit of it because, as I said, if one does not talk the talk, one should not walk the walk - Ms Quinlan goes on to state:

Have you ever listened to someone plead with you to let them take their own life? Have you ever spent hours wishing you could just make it all go away ... ? Have you ever watched someone spend hours trying to figure out why they feel so desolate? Have you ever woken up to the news that your friend just couldn't take it anymore and decided to end it all?

I have.

Speaking for myself, I have as well. Ms Quinlan continues:

Both in my work and in my personal life. I can't and I won't sit back while you take money from services that are saving lives every single day.

If the Minister were here, I would say to him that it is disgusting that the most vulnerable in this country are being treated not like second-class citizens, not like third-class citizens but like non-existent citizens. A while ago, one person said to me that it is funny that politicians all talk about suicide and how they can fix it, that they will provide this and they will do that, but yet nothing happens. Some of these people have said to me that the issue is not on the Government's priority list or that the dead do not vote. These are the facts.

I genuinely ask the Government to go back to its Deputies so that the next time we discuss mental health in this Chamber, they will not be insulting to brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts and friends. It disgusts me the way the Government can talk about it here today.

As for whether there is a plus side, the best option for the Government is to look at the NGOs. The NGOs are not about putting money in their back pockets, ticking all the right boxes to be politically correct. They believe in the people and they go out and help them. One of the greatest honours in life is to speak to somebody who has suffered with depression. I have seen it and I have helped people. I brought a gentleman to St. Michael's in Cork and had to beg to get him in. That is how difficult it is to help people in this country. If it is that difficult to help somebody in this country who has threatened to take his own life, God only knows how bad the system is and what the real picture is.

I would encourage those in the Visitors Gallery and watching on television to contact their Deputies. They should give their Deputies the true life stories. Let us humanise it. Let us take the big mockeyah, as we would say in Cork, cloud away. This is a real epidemic.

The number of suicides per month or per year were mentioned. I do not believe any of the figures. If a person goes out tonight and decides that he or she has enough and wants to end his or her life and takes an overdose, it does not have to be suicide. There is accidental poisoning. Are we massaging the figures?

Filicide is another horrible example. People drowning families and taking their own life afterwards is filicide, or murder followed by suicide. That could be recorded as death by drowning. Are figures being massaged? We need to get the real picture here. However, we must see the big picture. There are thousands of families, some of whom I have dealt with over the years, who are broken and destroyed. Ten or 15 years ago, on a Sunday morning, the local pub was probably one of the best meeting places. Now the local graveyard is probably the best meeting place. That will tell one what is happening here.

I am disgusted and ashamed and I am probably letting down this lady, Ms Katie Quinlan, in that I am not in a position to get an answer from the Minister today. However, I will be listening intently from here on in every time mental health comes up. I have worked in the area for a long time. I represent many of the people who are watching today, and they are listening. People are taking more note of what is happening. I urge the Minister that the next time he speaks to treat people, their families and their friends with dignity because, God knows, one never knows when suicide will knock on one's own door.

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