Farming special - Day 1: Half of farmers directly hit by suicide
The scale of the problem in rural Ireland comes just days after Mental Health Minister Kathleen Lynch said the Government was “very concerned” about the high rate of suicide, and a CSO report confirmed that more than 500 people had died by suicide here in 2011.
Ireland has the fourth highest suicide rate in Europe, with 10 people taking their own life every week.
The Irish Examiner/ICMSA farming survey found that 53% of farmers had been impacted by suicide in some way. A total of 16% said they had experienced it either in their immediate or wider family while more than a third had experience of suicide among the local community or neighbours.
A fifth of farmers between the age of 35 and 44 had lost someone to suicide within their immediate or wider family.
The national opinion poll also found economic and social issues were now clearly to the forefront of farmers’ minds when voting.
When compared with last year, farmers are now less worried about emigration and more worried about healthcare costs, which is now cited by 43% of farmers as the main factor influencing their vote — up some 16% on last year.
Social issues also remained to the fore, with 34% citing crime, law and order and vandalism as key concerns — up from 22% in 2013.
Other issues such as suicide (26%), mortgage arrears (24%), drug abuse (16%) and alcohol abuse (13%) were also increasingly becoming important issues for farmers when they vote.
The issue of suicide among the farming community was brought into sharp focus in 2012 when farmer and Fine Gael junior minister at the Department of Agriculture, Shane McEntee, took his own life.
The issue was also raised last year when the impact of the fodder crisis was cited as one of the main factors behind the suspected deaths by suicide of seven West Clare farmers. .
President of the ICMSA John Comer said for those working in rural Ireland, the “terrible plague” of suicide was an all-too real occurrence. He said that while urban Ireland might be surprised by the number of farmers hit by suicide, rural people would not be.
“I’m not saying that the gradual withdrawal of services and social infrastructure from rural Ireland is a cause of the terrible plague of suicides, but it perhaps is a cause, or at least a contributory factor, to that sense of rural isolation that is unanimously identified by groups working in rural areas as being a massively negative factor working against overall mental health,” he said.
“We have to keep life in our rural communities and that means making it easier to live and earn a living in those communities.”
