John Crown (Independent)

I thank the Minister of State for turning her attention and considerable skills to this troubling area. I am 54 years old and have personally known 14 people who committed suicide, including nine health care professionals and people who in some cases were known to suffer from mental illness. This is clearly a major problem and anybody who does this sad calculation will realise a considerable proportion of the people they know have been touched by this issue.

While I completely understand the problem of rural isolation, we should not in any way try to make the case for reducing the burden of suicide by increasing access to alcohol. Alcohol is an addictive cancer causing toxin which can depress people and lead them to suicide ideation. It is not a solution. I do not suggest my colleagues were arguing such a case and I understand they are trying to disconnect the notion of alcohol from social isolation. Perhaps we need to consider creative ways of increasing connectivity for older people in isolated rural areas while avoiding the impression that we condone increased alcohol consumption.

These are excellent initiatives but another issue lies at the heart of them. We need to find out how we compare to other jurisdictions in terms of the number of consultant psychiatrists employed in this country per head of population. The numbers are not as bad in respect of psychiatry compared with other specialties. We tend to have dismal and appalling ratios of specialists per head of population but we are merely bad in the area of psychiatry. We are at the bottom of the scale but a bit of effort would bring us to international norms.

We also need to critically examine medical school funding and resources to decide whether our six medical schools, which equate to one per 700,000 people, or twice the European average and three times the American average, are sufficiently resourced with full-time researchers and consultant level academic university employees who are conducting psychiatric research into the unique context of suicide in Ireland and can offer a critical educational grounding not only for young psychiatrists but also for GPs and other health care professionals.