PUBLIC concern about the growing incidence of suicide in Ireland has been fuelled by the study by the Cork based Suicide Research Foundation which is to be published shortly in Crisis, the international journal for suicide prevention. Earlier this month newspaper notices announced the formation of an Institute of Suicidology.

Inevitably, fresh attention will focus on the role played by the media; an issue which evoked particular controversy in 1995 after the decision by The Sunday Tribune to publish an interview with Pat Tierney by a journalist who knew of his intention to kill himself.

Tierney had made it clear to the paper that he would not accept outside help, and that the journalists would in any case be powerless to prevent him from carrying out his intention.

The Tierney case highlighted the fact that there are certain areas where legislation is inappropriate and where even a code of journalistic ethics provides a poor enough guide.

As someone who was peripherally involved in the case - I first became aware of the circumstances after Pat Tierney had actually died and after the decision had been taken to publish the interview - I have spent some time trying to identify some of the issues involved.

I believe that we have obligations as citizens before, during and after our function as journalists. It is easier to agree on that, however, than on what precisely those obligations are.

It is also very difficult to identify responses to a situation like that created by Pat Tierney which are specifically journalistic, rather than primarily human.

Some of us may well believe that suicide is entirely a personal matter, and that neither the State nor anyone else should intervene to prevent it.

It is of course quite possible, and very likely, that many people who hold this view will see no contradiction between their belief and making attempts to dissuade people from taking their own lives. In the final analysis, however, they believe that such people, while they perhaps should not be facilitated or encouraged should not be prevented from performing the final act. It is actually still a crime to assist a suicide.

Other journalists believe that the preservation of human life is a social good, and that there is a moral obligation on all who are approached by would be suicides to intervene in any way possible to help prevent it.

The role and practice of journalism within a value system which lacks consensus raises a number of issues which are not susceptible to glib answers.

Why, for example, would a would be suicide seek the confidence of a journalist? It is certainly unusual. The would be suicide may simply have identified the journalist as a public person with a reputation as a concerned and caring human being.

If this happens, I am not convinced that journalists will be able to develop a sort of sixth sense that will enable them to warn off the person at the other end of the phone, and consciously prevent any of the ethical dilemmas actually arising - as one commentator suggested.

This approach, carried to extremes, would suggest that journalists should never talk to would be suicides because they are journalists which is obviously carrying things a bit far.

Equally obviously, they should never resort to clinical formulae which fail to meet the central point of the call - a need by the caller for some sort of meaningful human exchange at a moment of personal crisis.

There is a problem in that would be suicides may also see the journalist as a public person with unrivalled access to the media, and contact the journalist as a way of strengthening his or her resolve.

ON THE verge of the act itself, any hesitation can be countered by the knowledge that she/he has told someone that the act will be carried out: to pull back at this stage, therefore, would lead to innumerable complications, incarceration or some other form of forcible restraint among them.

This raises the issue of manipulation, with which journalists are (or ought to be) familiar.

Co operation by any journalist with manipulative behaviour of this kind raises serious questions. Theoretically, there is always the possibility that over arching considerations of the public interest might justify such a relationship, but it is difficult, to put it mildly, to envisage concrete examples.

Regardless of journalists' personal views about the morality of suicide they should, I suggest, act on the basis of a conviction that generally the best thing they can do to help a would be suicide who contacts them is to maintain a general attitude of sympathy combined with an offer of any intervention or help towards a resolution of the person's problems that it may be in the journalists power to give.

They should, however, be hyperconscious of the potential for misunderstanding embodied in the would be suicide's view of the journalist's role. It goes without saying that they should not make deals of any sort.

Not only should they not promise publication, they should go to any necessary lengths to explain, at the beginning of any conversation, that no guarantee of publication is available, whether it has been asked for or not.

Would be suicides may often interpret silence on this point as consent, or may fear to raise it for fear of encountering a refusal.

And the journalists should always keep their editors informed. Indeed, given the potentially serious consequences of any misunderstanding, it may be a good idea for editors to work out, in advance of any crisis situation, their own editorial policy on this issue, and make sure that all their journalists know it.

Being able to tell would be suicides what editorial policy is would strengthen the hand of any journalist in such a difficult situation.