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Senator Mark Daly:       I welcome the Minister of State to the House and compliment her on her performance not only on “The Frontline” but around the negotiation table in the run-up to the budget. As we know, an estimated 600 people committed suicide in 2011. I mention this as an estimate as many road traffic accidents are actually suicides. The number of deaths caused by motor collisions has been lowered to approximately 200, the best figure we have seen in 30 years, but it comes at a cost. People are not going out or to the pubs as much, preferring to stay at home, perhaps isolated and drinking on their own. In some instances we have replaced one form of death with another.

January has seen a shocking litany of suicides in Ireland. There were five on 1 January, three on 2 January, two on 3 January, four on 4 January, three on each of 5, 6 and 8 January, two on 9 January, with another two last Tuesday. That is just one month. We must ask, as a society, what in Ireland causes so many people to die by their own hand. I spoke to a friend of mine in the United States about attending funerals of friends who had committed suicide, recounting how many I had gone to. He told me he did not know anybody who knew anybody else who committed suicide. There is an endemic problem in our society involving those from the elderly abroad to the young people who see no future.

I know the following is not related to the Minister of State’s brief but she might raise the issue as it relates to guidance counsellors, who play a very important role. A guidance counsellor walking through a school yard in December noticed one of the students acting strangely and spoke to him in the teacher’s office. The student explained how he had planned suicide. Not only was he going to kill himself but his two friends were also entered into a pact. Only for the actions of that guidance counsellor, those three students could well be dead today. Such counsellors play a very important role and nothing can compensate a family for a loss so horrendous as the loss of a loved one. Counsellors play an important role in preventing suicides, which is what we are here to discuss.