Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I look forward to walking on my own Darkness into Light walk in Portlaw this weekend. I normally attend the one in Waterford city but this time I am staying local. It is great to see all of these walks. Initially, they were in the big cities and towns but now they are in nearly every community, which has to be welcomed.

I want to touch on some of the funding that has been provided. I recently increased funding for suicide crisis counselling through Pieta, the national suicide bereavement liaison service and the national Traveller Counselling Service. There are also dedicated resource officers for suicide prevention in each of the Dublin health regions, promoting and co-ordinating suicide prevention initiatives in their local areas.Work to enhance services in Dublin and nationwide has taken place through Connecting for Life, our national suicide reduction strategy, and this has seen sustained investment in funding. As Minister of State, I fund the National Office for Suicide Prevention, whose budget has tripled between 2012 and 2025, from approximately €5 million to €15 million. We recently went out for public consultation for a new Connecting for Life process, which is our programme for reducing suicide. Unbelievably, we got 1,895 submissions. The last time we went out for public consultation on this, we got 300 submissions. Those 1,900 submissions show that people are speaking more openly about their mental health. I encourage everyone, especially men, to do so. I thank the Senator for giving me the opportunity to come into the Seanad today; I appreciate it.