Despair of suicidal young people ignored, says priest

THE despair driving young people to suicide has been ignored amid the push to turn Belfast into a centre of prosperity, a priest claimed yesterday.

As hundreds gathered for the funeral of a teenager who hanged herself at her boyfriend’s graveside, Father Stephen Rooney launched a blistering attack on the authorities’ failure to deal with the crisis.

He told mourners: “They are trying to tell us it’s a place of hope, but they drove us to hopelessness and deprived us of hope.