Suicide rate not on the increase, says CSO

Data does not support the general perception that the incidence of suicide in Ireland is increasing, a senior official in the CSO has claimed.

The CSO’s assistant director general, Steve McFeely, said there was a danger that too much was being read into relatively small changes in suicide rates.

He was commenting on a draft report on suicide by Labour senator John Gilroy at yesterday’s meeting of the joint Oireachtas committee on health and children.