Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

All over the country, men and women and children face the most harrowing reality on a daily basis that a loved one has died by suicide. Somehow they have to find the energy to face this reality every day and to carry on into the future, a future very different from the one they once hoped for. The intensity of their grief is unimaginable. Their loss and the loneliness is often beyond words and it is awful that none of us, no matter how deep our compassion, can ever understand their grief in the same way they can never understand what drove someone they loved to a point of such sadness and despair that he or she could not carry on.

It is good that there are many volunteer agencies such as the Samaritans, Console, Aware and others that do much to help them. Waterford County Council under mayor, Liam Brazil, will hold a conference on mental health and suicide awareness next month in Dungarvan and its members are to be commended for their efforts in this regard. Speakers from Living Links, Suicide or Survive, Mind Your Mind, the Irish Society of Suicidology, the HSE and others will address the conference. Many organisations and individuals deal with this issue. More important, they do outstanding work to reduce the incidence of suicide in order that fewer individuals and families will be beset by this awful grief.

Suicide was a taboo subject in Ireland for many years. I fear that the problem was neglected by the State and, therefore, our understanding of suicide has only begun to grow in recent years. However, we need to do much more to bring public attention to the issues that lead to suicide.

There are things we can do as individuals, families and communities, but in this Chamber we can also play a role in bringing together all the strands of care, treatment and support for those who feel suicidal as well as the support systems for those whose lives have been traumatised by suicide.

To this end, like other speakers, I favour a co-ordinated national approach to this growing problem. The growth in the incidence of suicide in Ireland has seen the establishment of a number of organisations dedicated to the issue of suicide in one way or another. Many people have called for a strategy similar to the one on road safety.