Suicide group fails to spend third of budget

A HSE group tasked with battling Ireland’s suicide epidemic failed to spend almost a third of its budget last year due to serious delays in finding someone to lead the organisation.

The director of the National Office of Suicide Prevention (NOSP), Gerry Raleigh, has confirmed the under-spend was directly linked to his new position being left unfilled for most of the year. In a lengthy interview with Irish Medical News, Mr Raleigh, who took up the role in late 2012, said that despite a €7m budget last year, the NOSP spent just €5.19m.

Confirming the shortfall “was an issue when suicide was such a high-risk” problem, he said: “Perhaps the most significant reason was there were three different directors in the office in 2012, so there were leadership changes and, with that, slippage, in terms of plans and implementation.”