Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Minister on his new portfolio and wish him well in it. There is a specific issue to which I draw his attention in the context of the Bill and in which I ask him to take a particular interest to see what he can do through the legislation that would be of assistance. The issue is suicide recording practices. The Bill is relevant to this and perhaps the Minister and his officials would examine the legislation in this context to see whether any amendments to it are necessary or whether it is a question of practice. In addition, during his discussion with the coroners, he should examine what would be helpful in this area. As we know, suicide and self-harm is a significant public health issue. For example, 493 deaths by suicide occurred in 2004, and nearly 11,000 episodes of self-harm were recorded in our accident and emergency departments. This is a major issue, and there are many agencies dealing with it — the Irish Association of Suicidology, the National Office for Suicide Prevention, and the National Suicide Research Foundation — and much work being done. We also have a National Strategy for Action on Suicide Prevention. There is currently a proposal to establish a national inquiry into suicide in Ireland, in which the coroners could play an interesting and useful role. There is also discussion of a pilot project involving a number of coroners in Cork. The Minister's Department should encourage this and make sure the project takes place.

The new Coroners Bill and the management structure proposed within it offer the opportunity to collect more robust, systematic data on suicide at a personal level, and aggregate it nationally so that better figures are available. This would provide more information from a socio-demographic point of view, which could be used to plan proper prevention programmes. The type of systematic data collection that is made possible by this Bill would thus allow for a more uniform approach to inquest hearings, which would be extremely helpful.

There are several questions which the Minister might consider and return to at a later stage. Does the Bill allow for the collection of psychological autopsy data, as suggested by the NSRF scoping study, which could then be passed on and aggregated at a national level? This would be extremely helpful. The question of increased support for the bereaved is also mentioned in the Bill. Will the chief coroner, for example, have the ability to select appropriately qualified staff to undertake this sensitive task? Another issue the Minister might consider is that the coroners currently work to a criminal definition of suicide, which requires establishment beyond reasonable doubt. A more socially relevant civil law approach would be the test of balance of probabilities, which would allow more actual suicides to be recorded as such. Would the power of the chief coroner under section 14 allow him or her to make such a submission to the relevant Minister? There are a number of ways in which, either by amendment to the legislation or perhaps a guide to practice, a useful contribution could be made in the area of suicide prevention.

Section 9 contains the phrase "contribute to the enhancement of public health and safety". Would the Minister consider an amendment along the lines of, "by facilitating the use of information obtained in inquests for the purpose of a national inquiry into suicide deaths and other deaths leading to a coroner's inquest"? Such an addition would be helpful at that point. In addition, the Minister might consider amending section 48 so that an inquiry is allowed if it would be helpful at an individual level for the next of kin or, at a more general level, for public health and safety. This would also present an opportunity to collect useful data and it would be helpful if the criteria to allow coroners to do so were built into the legislation. I ask the Minister to consider these issues when the Bill reaches Committee Stage.