Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Ministers of State well in their roles. I am delighted for them and their families and I am sure it is a great honour for them. All I can say to begin with is that I hope they are not treated with the same contempt as their predecessors responsible for this area. I never doubted their commitment and the former Minister of State, Ms Kathleen Lynch, was a fantastic person and very focused on the job at hand. Sadly, the cupboard was always raided and the money was never available that it was thought would be available. It seems that is the way this Administration is starting too, with a diversion of €12 million and rumours of other money going away. As a nation, we have continued to pay lip service to mental health. It seems everybody agrees with the content of A Vision for Change, which started in 2006, but as of today less than 40% of it has been implemented. There are rumours that psychiatric nurses are preparing for strike action because of the lack of supporting numbers.

I know many colleagues have dealt with all the different aspects of mental health but suicide prevention is of most interest to me. Everybody in this House, the Seanad and wider society has an interest in this issue. The only thing missing is our making a penetrative impact by resourcing the plans we have and the strategies developed by experts. They can begin to peel back the blindfold on the phenomenon of loss of life through suicide. It is a battle we are continuing to lose and which we refuse to face. For example, we know the equivalent number of people in two planes crashing - 600 people - are affected. That is the population of an entire village wiped out. If it happened in another country, the United Nations would send in troops and Concern would call for additional investment. As Irish society always does, we would dig deep to support the cause, yet we have done nothing.

We have developed a great strategy, Connecting for Life, and the Minister of State and I discussed it on Vincent Browne's show. I do not doubt the brilliant innovations in that and I recognise some stuff from the paper I wrote on the matter. This is not about credit or anything like it but rather the implementation of that plan. The money is just not being made available to it so the question is whether we are serious about wanting to save lives. What is needed, in effect, is a national authority. One regularly hears a comparison being made with the National Roads Authority, and, at the peak of its work, it spent in the region of €200,000 per fatality to deal with the problem of road deaths. The most spent in this country so far in trying to deal with loss of life through suicide, in a similar comparison, was €6,000 per fatality. That does not equate to the kind of commitment indicated by the rhetoric of these houses following a high-profile suicide or that of a child and so on. It does not equate to the kind of commitment we ought to have.

There was a tragic murder this morning and if a suicide was treated like that or as in another country, we would throw money at the issue. We simply just do not care. There are broader mental health issues throughout the country, in Sligo and Leitrim, south Donegal and west Cavan, which I represent. Does the Minister of State know how long it takes to see a child psychologist in those areas? Does she know how difficult it is when a 17-year-old with difficulties turns 18? Those people get thrown under the bus because they are out of the system. We say, "Sorry, you can join the queue over there and we will get to you when we can". There is an issue in that regard.

In the context of the murder this morning in Dublin, what we have at the top of the Garda is the same as what we have at the top of the Health Service Executive. There is a senior crew and everything they say is laundered through a public relations agency to make it sound good. All of us know through our constituencies - the towns, cities and rural communities in which we live throughout the country - when we speak to any health care professional that they are worked to the bone. The resources are not there and what resources there are might be spent in the wrong place. Perhaps they are caught in administration; at least that is what we all love to think. Morale, as in the Garda, is at an all-time low in this area. Health care professionals engaged in the mental health services, particularly those in suicide prevention, are not getting the support or resources they need.

With suicide prevention, there should be one authority and appropriate resourcing to implement Connecting for Life and the many good parts within it. That means there should be more resource officers in every community. We do not need an organisation in every townland associated with suicide prevention. All the actions should be determined by the National Office for Suicide Prevention or a single national authority. It should not be buried in the bowels of the HSE, subservient to the budgetary constraints that it has on an ongoing basis.

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