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

I thank the Minister of State for being here. In fairness, it is not easy. I listened to most speakers today and to the Minister of State's opening statement, and it is true. People still hear it said that it is impossible to commit suicide in Ireland. It is actually impossible; a person cannot commit suicide in Ireland, since it was decriminalised in 1993.

I want to put on the record that I always said I would work with the Minister of State. We have worked on other various projects. I attended the launch of the Minister of State's pilot project in Cork. It is my opinion that we missed a massive opportunity last night because by regulating any service, we make somebody accountable and responsible for their mistakes.

I will go back to when we had the Sub-Committee on Mental Health in the previous Dáil. I will tell the Minister of State how bad it is. It is not the people or the front-line workers. It is the issue with top management. I remember speaking to a child psychologist who was appearing as a witness before the committee. The first question I asked him was about whether he was threatened by senior management for coming to the committee meeting on that day. His response was "Yes". That is a shocking indictment of how something is going to be run. This man was a child psychologist. The Minister of State can go back and check the record on that. A very interesting article on thejournal.ie by Órla Ryan, entitled "Falling Through the Cracks", actually shows how dysfunctional the system we have is at the moment. However, it also points out how we can improve it.

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