Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is to take a "strong personal interest" in efforts to cut Ireland's suicide rates by 20 per cent over the next five years, following a meeting with organisations campaigning on the issue.
The meeting took place after Mr Ahern was criticised in some quarters for telling the Irish Congress of Trade Unions that he did not know why some of those complaining about the economy did not commit suicide.
Emphasising the Government's commitment to cut the death toll, Mr Ahern, who was accompanied by Minister of State for Health Jimmy Devins, said he "looked forward" to detailed proposals from the Suicide Alliance.
The Government, he said, wished to work in partnership with the alliance and all other interested parties over the next five years to meet the programme for government's "ambitious" goal of reducing suicide rates substantially by 2012.
The National Strategy for Action on Suicide will be led by the National Office for Suicide Prevention and the Department of Health and Children, Mr Ahern told the lobby group at a meeting in Government Buildings.
Chairman of Suicide Alliance John Saunders said he had urged Mr Ahern to take personal command of the strategy: "He accepted it was a very severe crisis that we are in, and that there needs to be very much a partnership approach to it, so he invited us to submit a detailed proposal around our ideas, and of course central to that proposal will be the idea that the Taoiseach's office should co-ordinate or manage in some way a national approach to tackling the problem.
"He has agreed in principle, he wants to see the detail and he has asked the Department of Health to also make sure that they get involved, and that they co-ordinate with us to ensure there is this common approach."
Calling for extra State money, Mr Saunders said the existing €5 million being spent "aren't enough resources to make sure" that the Government's existing suicide reduction strategies "are rolled out sufficiently".
"What we need is the finance to back it up. We need to see a doubling of the budget immediately up to around €10 million per annum, consistently applied over a number of years," Mr Saunders added.
