Response to suicide crisis ‘scandalous’

States services and supports for those with mental health problems and the growing suicide crisis are “inadequate and scandalous”, a priest has stated.

Fr Tony O’Riordan, PP Moyross, Limerick, who was speaking at the funeral Mass of a man who died in the River Shannon, described the services as “pitifully inadequate, scandalous, and inexcusable”.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) provisional figures, 475 people took their lives in 2013. Just under 200 people died on the roads last year.